I guess I didn't state my point explicitly enough on this issue. My contention is that much more would have to change in US policy for there to be many more than two carriers at Pearl Harbor at any one time. First Roosevelt had been warned by Admiral Richardson long before the attack on Pearl Harbor that the base was vulnerable to attack, so to allow more than two carriers at a time to be there was a known risk. Secondly, the seven USN carriers were very busy at the time, not only in the Pacific but also in the Atlantic. The USN had only three carriers in the Pacific at the time and they were constantly shuttling back and forth between the West Coast, Hawaii, and other outlying bases, not to mention training at sea. Third, Pearl Harbor could not really accommodate five carriers and their airgroups at one time. Besides congestion in the harbor itself, it was standard practice to fly off the carrier airgroups to shore bases to continue pilot and aircrew training when the carriers were in port; there were not enough air fields on Oahu to operate some 300-350 planes in addition to the normal air garrisons. So a lot more would have to be changed than just a decision to base five aircraft carriers at Oahu in order for the "what-if' to make any sense.


A lot depends on how badly they might be damaged. But, assuming the historical attack, the Japanese first target priority was the battleships, carriers were only second, so they wouldn't have that many planes assigned to attack them. And when in port, the USN carriers did not have their airgroups aboard, fuel lines were drained and secured, and munitions either removed or secured in the magazines. So the chance of uncontrollable fires, which was what damaged or destroyed most carriers during the war is greatly reduced. If hit by dive or level bombers using ordinary bombs (the Japanese were very short of armor piercing bombs) most of the damage will be restricted to the flight and hangar decks. Repairs to these two areas are relatively easy, the biggest problem being repairing the elevators if they are damaged. The Yorktown took severe damage to her flight deck and hangar at Coral Sea, yet enough was repaired to get her battle-worthy in just 72 hours. If the ship is hit by torpedoes, the hull will be damaged and flooding will take place, but worst case, the ship will settle to the bottom and flooding will be localized. The Saratoga was hit several time by torpedoes during the war and in no case did it take longer than three months to repair her, and this included a refit and modifications. Bottom line, any carriers at Pearl Harbor could expect to receive less damage than the battleships, and it would be much easier to repair because of the nature of carrier design. The Essex class ships were built from the keel up in an average of 16 months; repairing damage to an already existing carrier will take no longer than a third of that time.


Well, you might want to read "Shattered Sword" by Joanathan Parshall and Anthony Tully for a different take on just how easy it would have been for the Japanese to capture Midway, even without US carriers in the mix. But Midway was not all that important to the US and would have represented a tremendous defensive and logistical liability to the Japanese. It could not be effectively used for air attacks on Hawaii, it was too small and too far away. If it required US carriers to defend it, that went double for the Japanese to defend it after capture;as soon as the Japanese carriers returned to their base, Midway would be defenseless against any US counter-attack. And the Japanese couldn't keep their carriers there for more than a week or two.


The American public did not begin to exhibit "war weariness" until the troops in Europe starting coming home in the May-June, 1945 time frame, and then it was mostly because the end was in sight and they began to be impatient for all the troops to come home; no one wants to be the last one killed in a war. As for economic issues, they just weren't part of the equation. Nobody in the US suffered much economically from the war. In fact, the US was the only belligerent country where civilian consumer spending went up during the war, and the greatest worry was about post-war recession which really didn't happen. Opinion polls taken in the spring of 1945, showed that the American public supported the policy of total defeat of Japan and were willing to make whatever sacrifices that entailed. After Pearl Harbor, there was absolutely ZERO chance of negotiation for Japan, no matter what reverses the US suffered. In fact, the British historian H. P. Wilmott contends (as do I), that Pearl Harbor was the battle that doomed Japan.