I don't think West Coast to NRT is the big problem since AA flies there from LAX and SJC.

The big problem is that they only fly to China (PVG) from ORD, and they scheduled that flight to depart ORD at 11:05 AM! This makes it impossible to do same-day connections from the West Coast. If they retire the only SAN-ORD redeye, then it's no longer possible to fly to PVG from SAN on AA without connecting in LAX to a redeye and then again in ORD.

As much as I am an AA loyalist, UA has AA beat hands down when it comes to Asia travel. Unfortunately on AA you do sometimes have to "fly east to fly west" when you're traveling to Asia on AA.