A sailor did not carry only a grade: the spoken title could also identify the branch in which that person served. Flight personnel, engineers, and other specialists therefore acquired longer compound names built around the grade. The navy had introduced this convention shortly before replacing its lower-deck hierarchy in 1942, forcing personnel to absorb both layers of change. Their ability to absorb both changes without institutional breakdown speaks to the professionalism of Japanese ratings and petty officers, even though the reform itself was unsound.
Notable Point · 34:04-36:22
How Japanese specialisms lengthened every lower-deck rank
Aviation, engineering, and other specialisms were inserted inside Imperial Japanese Navy rank names, multiplying the complexity of a system already being changed in wartime.