While most contemporaries feel the classic Japanese Defensive/Great Battle strategy to be used in any war against the United States in the Pacific changed when Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto took over, that is not true. A quick look at Japanese planning for the Midway Operation shows this. In the middle of January 1942, Rear Admiral Matone Ugaki, Yamamoto's chief of staff, proposed that after "June of this year we should occupy Midway, Johnston, and Palmyra, send our air force forward to these islands and dispatch the Combined Fleet with an occupying force to occupy Hawaii and at the same time bring the enemy fleet into a decisive battle." Ugaki said a mouth full with that one statement, and it said volumes about the Japanese strategy in the Pacific. At first glance, it seems like an aggressive plan, one that is full of offense. But upon closer examination, you will find the truly defensive nature of this operation. First, other than a acting as a buffer zone between the United States and
Japan, Midway, Johnston and Palmyra held little strategic value to the Japanese. They are simply to far away to do so and lacked any of the strategic natural resources the Japanese were fighting for in the first place. Secondly, why should the Japanese now occupy Hawaii, when they chose not to at a far more advantageous time earlier in the war? (This point was realized by a few of the brilliant young officers in the Japanese navy, but not until after the battle was lost. See Aftermath: Japanese Analysis). As you can see, the strategic policy of a defensive war hadn't changed. These outpost would simply allow for the Great All-Out Battle to take place more at the choosing of the Japanese- they would no longer have to rely on the American's sailing for Tokyo and fighting in Japanese home waters. They could do the same thing in Hawaiian waters. The end result was the same: get the American's to sue for peace, then gobble up the rest of the Pacific at their leisure.
While this new strategy wasn't as great a departure from the overall strategy, many in the Navy balked at the suggestion. When Ugaki turned Operation MI, as it was known, over to senior staff officer Captain Kameto Kuroshima, it was immediately obvious that he did not like the plan. Kuroshima felt that the US Fleet would not show up to defend the three islands, and they would "be stuck with three islands difficult to maintain". Kuroshima convinced Ugaki to concentrate on a westward drive into Burma and India, which Ugaki reluctantly agreed to, for a time.