Captain Iwabuchi may not have communicated his order to flood the port engine room to others and maybe in particular to the two destroyers along side. I do not believe he understood the true condition of his ship and simply was attempting to correct the starboard list which had become so great it was difficult to stand.

With two of the Emperor’s destroyers alongside and in the vary process of accepting his crew, it would be a incomprehensible act to give orders to purposely sink the ship and threaten the lives not only of his own crew but also the two destroyers and their crews. There is no real evidence of any scuttling order, just an attempt at counter flooding on a ship with a negative GM which Iwabuchi did not understand at the time. Her sudden capsizing certainly caught him by surprise and he was lucky to survive. There is no case during WORLD WAR II of the Japanese ever attempting to scuttle a major capital ship in this way and I do not believe Iwabuchi would have left Japanese doctrine.