Japan’s defeat was inevitable as soon as the bombs began falling on Pearl Harbor.

The Japanese didn’t understand America. They interpreted America’s previous efforts to compromise as being examples of a democracy’s inability to wage a war. The leadership of Japan truly believed that once they had destroyed the American fleet and established their defensive zone, America would decide that dislodging the Empire of the Rising Sun was too expensive and would meekly acquiese to Japanese domination of the Pacific.

Tellingly, Admiral Yamamoto had studied in America (Chicago, if I am not mistaken), and he pled with his superiors not to send him to Pearl Harbor. He told them that he would sink the American fleet, run rampant in the Pacific for eighteen months, and then the awakened giant would “grind us to dust.” He was prescient except for the eighteen months part - we stopped the advance of the Japanese Empire at the Coral Sea half a year later.

America’s industry dwarfed Japan’s. A statistic I give to my kids is that at the beginning of the war, Japan had six fleet carriers (largely built from American steel) and America had two. After Pearl Harbor, Japan never built another carrier and America built 29 Essex class fleet carriers. Plus hundreds of smaller escort carriers.

When told of Pearl Harbor, Churchill (apocrophally? Maximum Leader?) smiled and said “Now we’ve won.”