You think Tokyo Rose wore a thong?

Now see ... that's not fair. You know good and well Jambo & I are sitting here thinking "Midway" as the turning point, and here you are with some top secret, off the map nugget of information ... hehe.

Let's see ... I will also attempt to avoid the obvious, or shall we say the patent academic answer that Midway was the turning point. Bearing in mind of course that no matter how clever we think we are in formulating an original and defensible answer to the question, the truth remains that the "standard" or traditional answer may still stand as the best.

Admiral Hara Tadaichi described December 7th, 1941 this way ... "We won a great tactical victory at Pearl Harbor and thereby lost the war." While the attack was a complete surprise, it turned out to be largely unnecessary. Unknown to Yamamoto the U.S. Navy had decided as far back as 1935 to not engage across the Pacific towards the Philippines in response to a belligerent Japan and any "foreign" war it started.

Furthermore, the U.S. adopted "Plan Dog" in 1940 as a contingency to the European War involving the US. It was set on keeping the Japanese out of the Eastern Pacific and away from the shipping lanes to Australia all while the U.S. devoted itself to defeating Germany. The point being, the Japanese lost the war when they decided upon "Operation Z", Pearl Harbor. Now, as to the turning point in their war against the US, once it began: I would argue that their inability to destroy the carrier fleet on the Day of Infamy was what enabled us to recover in a time span otherwise unthinkable if we had lost them. Carrier construction was (hell, it still is) "time consuming" to say the least - imagine how we even arrive at a Midway in June of 42' if we start the war with zero carriers in December of 41.'

Now ... I think your point was quite original, kudos. And I am not a fan of answering these questions as "they lost before they started", but my carrier point aside, if members of the Japanese Imperial Hierarchy believe in retrospect that the attack on Pearl was an insurmountable mistake, well ... who am I to argue?