Imperial Japanese Navy planning cannot be reduced to a simple obsession with finding one decisive battle. Expansion was intended to create an attrition belt that would force the Americans to commit a major share of their fleet at the far end of a long logistics line. That concept could work only if the United States rushed across the Pacific and continued forward after taking losses. Instead, Japan acquired territory that imperial prestige made difficult to abandon and that its armed forces then had to defend repeatedly. Allied industry could apply overwhelming force to one local operation without risking the whole fleet, turning the Japanese perimeter into a series of costly obligations. Defending the perimeter consumed the forces intended for the later decisive battle.
Notable Point · 2:22:33-2:25:00
Kantai Kessen began with an attrition problem
Japanese planning expected an extended perimeter to attrit an American advance before a decisive battle, but defending that perimeter instead consumed scarce Japanese forces.