Plus, Britain was fighting Japan in India, Burma, and Thailand draining Japan's resources from the other end. Japan's position by itself was hopeless in the long run. And Japan wasted troops in China as well. The miracle didn't happen.
Like Yamamoto (who knew America's industrial might) predicted, Japan would run wild the first year or two before the Allies (especially the U.S.) got organized. Then it would be one defeat after the other. That's exactly how it played out. If Japan had somehow managed to defeat the Marines at Guadalcanal, it would not have been long before another huge U.S. task force would have arrived to reconquer the island.
All of that is completely true.
But I think people are conflating what I am saying to mean we could have lost the war in the Pacific with saying there is a possibility we might not have won. Those aren’t the same thing.
in 2015 (heck, even in 1950) it is easy for people to accept the outcome of WWII as a predestined result, and it wasn’t. It had to be fought hard, with much expenditure of blood and money.
But that expenditure takes national will, and it is never a given that a national will is up the the challenge. One has only to look at the American Revolution. The British did not have the national will to continue and win the war. Many of us look at and think “Of course we won! What other outcome could there have been?”
I am currently reading the Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant, and he mentions at one point he thought it was a very real possibility that the North, after three hard years of fighting with the South, could have gone along with partitioning the country and being done with the war if a particular battle had not been won.
A lot of things can happen on the road to winning a war. Human beings have to prosecute a war, money, machines and industrial might cannot do it, only people can do it. And that requires will.
And will sometimes weakens.