[Skybird]

Probably no matter what Japan would have or could have done, in the end the constant shifting of balance in favour of the immense industrial potential of the US would have decided it all against japan. I am sure that JDR was convinced to win it from the very beginning. For those Japanese knowing America, it must have been clear from the beginning that they were starting a desperate fight for pure survival. In the movie "Tora Tora Tora", Yamato is presented as a commander who knew this very well. Without trying to brake the American strangling of Japan's need for oil, it also would have been a desperate situation for Japan. So they were damned when striking Pearl, and were damned if not striking Pearl.

I belong to those people thinking that JDR knew all this very well, and saw this as the needed key event to get the war-antipathic US (the population) into the war in Europe, which until Pearl Harbour was no popular option.

What I would have done as Japanese commander after the strike on Pearl? The movie paints it like the commander wanting to preserve the Japanese fleet for the war that just had been launched by hurting the awakling giant. In principle that was right, and there was not much meaning in going to possess Hawai, strategically, it would have left the Japanese wih too much space and too long supply lines to cover, imo. But i would have stayed a while in the region, trying to find and sink the missing carriers, before heading West again.