There's this line from the novel Cryptonomicon. The setting is late in WWII in the Pacific Theater. Basically, MacArthur is watching a five-o'clock charlie attempting to bomb his location and the author notes that the five-o'clock charlie is by definition a bad pilot because all the good ones were at the bottom of the ocean now. The warrior tradition died at Hiroshima and Nakasaki.
A work of fiction.
Maybe all the skilled, highly-trained pilots were at the bottom of the sea, but not all the brave ones. The Samurai is not dead, only sleeping. The code of Bushi-Do is not something in books; it is in the blood.
A new challenge, and it is coming, will find the Warrior 'tradition' reappearing as from nowhere.
"Cryptonomicon"
--great book, just finished "The Baroque Cycle", also great.