That's too pessimistic for the militarists. There were plenty of people who thought they could win in 1941, they just weren't everybody. Hell, there were still a lot of dangerous people who thought they could win in 1945.
I'll defer to your knowledge of the Pacific War, since I'm mostly interested in the war in Europe, but as far as I know, no one in Japan believed they could 'win' in 1945 - especially by the metrics they set out. Even if the US was not able to conquer the home islands, losing your entire empire and not getting conquered is a far cry from 'winning'.
"win" as in "drive the Americans back strong enough that they would give up and not conquer the home islands" is kind of what they were going for as "winning".
Bit of a moving goalpost, as leftists are known to do.
I'll defer to your knowledge of the Pacific War, since I'm mostly interested in the war in Europe, but as far as I know, no one in Japan believed they could 'win' in 1945 - especially by the metrics they set out. Even if the US was not able to conquer the home islands, losing your entire empire and not getting conquered is a far cry from 'winning'.
"win" as in "drive the Americans back strong enough that they would give up and not conquer the home islands" is kind of what they were going for as "winning".
Bit of a moving goalpost, as leftists are known to do.