Another one is that the "no surrender" mentality was a direct result of the terms of the Potsdam Declaration which demanded "unconditional surrender" from Japan. Japan knew they had lost, they were just hoping to fight for the SPECIFIC surrender condition of the preservation of the Imperial line (aka, let the Emporer still be the Emporer, preserve the family).

It should be pointed out that this is what ended up happening anyway. The emperor stayed in power and lived until like the 90s. So whoopsie daisy on the whole nuke thing