John Keegan argued that Midway was an important turning point in the Pacific War because Japan was unable to replace their aircraft carriers as quickly as the US. As they were the key weapons in this theatre, this gave the US a big advantage.
Jeremy Black argues that Japan lost because the Allies outfought them...
The historiography of this conflict focuses on the possible war crimes of the Japanese. These include the Bataan Death March, Korean Comfort Women and the Nanjing Massacre.
The Japanese Prime Minister in 1993, Hosokawa Morihiro, stated that his own country’s actions during the 1930s and 1940s was aggressive and unjustifiable. However, right-wing elements within Japan disagreed, arguing that the war was defensive and aimed to liberate the country from Western aggressors. The latter view has been more common since this time. Ueyama Shunpei, a professor of history at Kyoto University, was an advocate of this view.
The former view, the ‘Pacific War’, was the key argument put forward by the West during the Cold War.
Post-war Japan benefitted from the Cold War. The US did not want her to fall under the influence of the USSR so made sure she recovered economically (Between 1946 and 1952, Washington invested $2.2 billion — or $18 billion in real 21st-century dollars adjusted for inflation — in Japan’s reconstruction effort). Therefore, the war crimes (Bataan Death March, treatment of POW’s) were not made public; it was hoped the country would heal quicker (and accept the US occupation) without this information being made accessible to the world.
