If it were only Nanking you might have a point, in fact that was SOP wherever they conquered including the destruction of Manila. Unit 731 mentioned by **Johnny L. A. **above made Mengele’s actions seem like Mother Teresa. Amongst other horrors they experimented with chemical and biological weapons on captured people of all races and nationalities, and one of the ways that they determined the effects was to conduct autopsies, while the victim was alive and concious. Not that the US was guilt free in the Pacific War, it was a war of extermination on both sides, I just started a book called War Without Mercy that details some of the actions.
In fairness, we should also remember that the Chinese were fighting the Japanese, and tied down (and killed) a great many Japanese soldiers.
That’s a good point, and I can’t dispute that when it came to sheer industrial might, Germany was the recipient of the great majority of the whup-ass. Nobody seems to remember it now, but the Soviet war effort early on was propped up by American supplies.
That said, the significant advantage in U.S. personnel fighting in the Pacific suggests to me that the American will to fight Japan was about as strong as could be. More material was sent to Europe just because it had to be sent there; without it, the USSR was dead meat and Britain would have been ineffective. There wasn’t anyone in the Pacific theatre to send stuff to, except the British in a roundabout sort of way. The larger volume of supplies going to Europe doesn’t establish a great will to fight in Europe. It was just a realization that the Soviets and the British were in trouble.
I would sort of hope that with the war on, the U.S. Navy would be a little better at detecting that sort of thing. 
Well, those are the main problems, yeah. The victory at Midway was one of those battles where it was more a case of one side losing than the other winning; the USN deflected an attack, whereas it was a catastrophe for Japan.
But let’s suppose for the sake of argument that Japan takes Midway and maybe even Hawaii and the U.S. fights on. Do they
A) Lose the war,
B) Give up, or
C) Eventually win, but at greater cost?
My guess is C. One way or another, a country with ten times the industrial capacity is going to beat you sooner or later. I don’t know exactly HOW, but given a year to plan it I’m sure they would have come up with something. They could build more carriers and re-invade Hawaii, or attack from Australia, or whatever.
I mean, the disasters that befell the Allies in the early war were more than anyone was willing to accept. Britain’s loss of Singapore - the modern model of amazingly bad planning and generalship - was just as bad as losing Hawaii would have been.
Oh, okay, well, that settles it.
That’s an excellent point. In fact, I’d be willing to bet that the American desire to fight Japan was greater than that to fight in Europe. If memory serves, Roosevelt had to be very creative in providing munitions and such to England before the U.S. was officially involved in WWII, because of the tremendous pressure of the isolationists in Congress and across the nation. When Japan bombed Pearl, though, the U.S. became royally pissed off.
I must admit I hadn’t considered the Singapore example when making my argument. I’m beginning to think you may be right, that the U.S. would have continued to fight, just not as effectively. The war would likely have dragged on for a while, at least until the Soviet Union got involved and threatened Japan’s western flank. I bet Japan would have sued for peace, but would have kept some of the Pacific islands they lost during the war. The U.S. wouldn’t have been in a position of strength to dictate terms for quite a while.
Japan’s diplomatic strategy was sound, from thier point of view. The Japanese were will aware of thier inferiority in industrial production, etc. Only the most pathological of thier military really believed that Japan could ultimately win a war with the US. They believed that they could cut a deal.
With the Dutch, English and French irrelevant in the Asian sphere, they were the logical candidates to take thier place. So, if they could rely on Yamamoto’s six month window, they might take over those possessions and then cease fire with the US. The US had very little in the way of colonies, with the exception of the Phillipines, and might well be willing to sign away Viet Nam, the Dutch Indies, Burma, etc., since they weren’t ours to begin with.
Of course, they disastrously misunderstood the American temperment, by assuming that America would see an armistice as a reasonable and rational course.
There was never, even for a moment, any chance that Japan could ultimately prevail in a war with the U.S. They were in the same “island nation” predicament as Britain, everything they need they had to import. The US wouldn’t need aircraft carriers to reduce Japan to penury, several hundred submarines, disrupting thier martime trade, would have an effect equal if not greater than thousands of air raids.
So their only hope was to beat us to a standstill, early on, then negotiate a settlement. As a strategy it was brilliant, as a policy it was utterly insane.
As Lord Acton had it, never underestimate the importance of sheer stupidity in human history.