Yeah, jap tanks were crap. They had little in the way of artillery, either, actually. WTF were they thinking?
The Sherman was indeed not a great tank, but it did not exist in a vacuum. Nothing on the battlefield does. The Germans made many designs, and didn't make any of them in enough quantity. They also lacked reliability. The US tankers, being Americans, were used to cars, too. Look at the stats on vehicle ownership/familiarity before the war. Most US troops has first had experience keeping a car of that era running (since they could only afford "clunkers" that needed plenty of shade-tree work to keep running). Others were farm boys who had to fix engines as a matter of living on a farm. The Sherman fit well into that milieu. They were easy for our boys to keep running, and at least were not too slow.
And, as was said during the war: quantity has a quality all its own.
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