What is a major battle that the US lost to japan after Pearl Harbor?

Answer 1

The real Japanese goal was to take over the Philippines, so as to neutralize the possibility of American forces based there interfering with their plans for further conquest. The attack on Pearl Harbor was an elaboration on this strategy, to so damage the US fleet as to keep the US Navy from being able to interfere with Japanese attacks in the Philippines and southeast Asia. The Japanese attacked the Philippines at about the same time as they did Pearl Harbor, and within days had invaded the Philippines in heavy force. By May, 1942 the Japanese had completely defeated the American and Filipino defenders of the Philippines.

The Japanese also won a naval victory in the Battle of the Java Sea in February, 1942, completely destroying a hodgepodge collection of American, British, Dutch and Australian ships, fleeing the advancing Japanese who had deprived them of their anchorages.

The Japanese captured Wake Island, after first being repulsed once by the American garrison.

All this was in accord with the Japanese plan. They felt they needed six months after they attacked the US to conquer the prizes they had their eyes on and to consolidate their hold on them. They thought that, confronted with the Japanese firmly in control of its new conquests, the US, being weak and irresolute, would give up and make some kind of a peace, and let Japan keep what it had won. The Japanese had completely misread the Americans, and the American determination to see Japan completely defeated that took hold in America after Pearl Harbor. The Japanese never defeated the US after May, 1942, and the war was probably lost to them after the Battle of Midway in June, 1942, but it took over three more years and millions of dead to convince them.