Devilsadvocate responded with more,

This BS doesn't hold up to any close scrutiny. The Japanese seldom made landings against defended beaches,

Which is exactly why I specified undefended beaches.

and when they did they invariably got into trouble. The initial Malaya landings were against a beach defended by a half-trained Indian brigade armed with rifles and a few machine guns, yet they came within a hair of being repulsed. They succeeded only when the British commanders lost their nerve and ordered a retreat. The landings against the beaches on the Bataan peninsula were all annihilated to the last man, The landings against Corregidor were badly botched and proved extremely costly, they succeeded only because the defenders were badly demoralized by their situation.

Yet, they still won didn't they. There is always back and forth in almost every battle. Such is war. But the winner is the one who quits, last

The initial landings on Wake were repulsed with heavy losses.

There were no initial landing attempts even made during the Wake Island #1 fighting. The Japanese warships were driven off by coastal defense gunfire and some good bomb hits well before any Japanese troops even tried to board their landing barges.

The Japanese may have been good at making assault landings against Chinese peasant conscripts, but when they had to face defenses like those on Oahu, they were in deep trouble. In the first six months of the war, with few exceptions, the Japanese were successful largely because they were, in effect, expanding into a military vacume.

Smart of them wasn't it.

Yeah? Well, how do you explain the fact that every time the Japanese came up against the US Marines on anything like an equal basis in 1942, they lost?

AFAIK there weren't any equal basis battles against the Marines in 1942. The Japanee were almost always low on food, ammo, air support and radio sets. And of course, we all know that the US Marines were supermen too,

What the Japanese had going for them was years of intelligence that told them where to attack so that they wouldn't meet heavy opposition.

Exactly the ATL sceanrio that I have tried to design for an Oahu invasion

When they had to improvise after their "First Phase" operations ended, they were pathetic.

What better reason for the Japanese Empire to aim for a short war against the Americans, as I have been saying all along ?