You may be right. The Japanese leadership put a news blackout on what happened at Midway to their public going so far as to isolate returning survivors of the battle to keep them from spreading the news.
That’s true. And they kept the citizenry in the dark. But when China-based bombers started hitting industrial sites, rumors started and the Tarawa/Saipan invasions so close to the homeland made it plain to the citizenry they’d been lied to massively.