I am curious of anyone can recommend some material that explores the long range Japanese strategic plans. That is assuming they won at Midway and continued their operations in the Pacific, in the Aleutians, etc. I'm not looking at "historical fiction", per se, but rather the documented planning and goals for the leadership. Thanks all.
Japanese had no territorial ambition in America at that point. Their expansion in Asia had hit US interest is the area. The Japanese were told to withdraw their troops from occupied areas or face sanction. Japan had to import all of their oil (a large part was from the US). They also buy a lot of metal and other supplies from the US. They refused to withdraw. So the sanction was dropped on them. At the time they had only half year worth of fuel reserve left. They had to take action or face eventual defeat in the war when they run out of fuel to power their war machines on the battlefield. They decided to seize the resource rich areas in Southeast Asia including US colonies of Philippines and French IndoChina. In order to succeed and hold these areas without interference they had to destroy the only meaningful opposition - the US Pacific fleet. That's why they hit Pearl Harbor. It is to keep the US out of the war by destroy the US military force in the immediate vicinity. Obviously the goal was not reached after they failed to permanently disable most of the US battleships and did not touch the aircraft carriers and submarines at all. For the next years they were still trying to do the same - to knock US fleet out of action. So if they had succeeded at Midway, they'd probably just hold it and go no further than perhaps Hawaii. It is not in their best interest to go after the US mainland while they were still fighting a long war in China.
