When I mentioned resupply stations, I was including fuel, as well as other essential war materials. Sure, the U.S. had greater population and production potential, but if those structures had been destroyed, they wouldn't have meant a whole lot, at least for a period of time. Bringing new supplies to rebuild these stations and stock them with sufficient resources to bring back the U.S. fleet would have given the Japanese six months, maybe more, to seize the oilfields in Southeast Asia, primarily the Borneo and Indonesia area. This, combined with heavy war production in Japan (and factories in Korea and parts of China that they forced into service), would have given the Japanese ample resources to wage a war by sea. This six month time period would have also given the Japanese time to move these resources throughout the Pacific and fortify key installations such as the Marianas, the Marshall Islands, Midway, and the Solomon Islands in the Coral Sea. Luckily, we recovered quickly enough to prevent that from mattering.

Numbers are helpful, but they don't mean as much at sea as they do on land. If the Japanese had achieved the complete destruction of Pearl Harbor as intended, it's hard to determine whether the U.S. would have had the strength to go to war, regardless of will or want.

And the Japanese never intended to invade the American mainland. Acquisition of resources was their goal, and that would have just been silly.