To be fair, what Turner said was actually true in the "big picture" sense, if not the individual engagement sense. The overall feeling in the USN well before the war was that Japan could not possibly win. We told them as much, and very accurately, that they might win battles at the beginning, but every lose would sink them in a hole, and we'd continue to get stronger until their country was destroyed. (I can dig up the quote from a US Admiral to a Japanese diplomat (also an Admiral) in 1940).
I don;t think people with this "big picture" view automatically assumed the IJN was crap, but instead that it didn't matter if they were good or not, they didn't have enough staying power to matter in the long term.
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"Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one." — Thomas Paine
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