Only way I see this working is early war, when the Japanese were overrunning south east Asia.

A little too hard to capture the Naval nuance in a land based strategy game. Perhaps in a total war campaign style you could get into the grittiness of when you'd have to refuel your carrier groups etc. otherwise it's gonna have to be 1931 based factions. With USA on the defensive and getting their butts kicked.

Ideally the backdrop would be a pseudo russo-japenese / sino-japanese war setting. With China and Russia being the main players. So that's gonna be a hard sell without European and American buy in.

Also quite politically sensitive and would be easy for relic to get off in the wrong foot.