They must have calculated that the U.S. would destroy the facilities before we left. Capturing the Phillipines, Wake and other western Pacific outposts was of much less strategic value than Hawaii. Without U.S. control of Hawaii, Australia is pretty much out of the War, the western Aleutians cannot be held and the U.S. starts the War on it’s own goal line.
They must have calculated that the U.S. would destroy the facilities before we left.
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I agree that in a traditional Military Operation this would be a main concern.
However, they supposedly had a lot of ‘agents’ in the area, that were getting a ‘feel’ for our state of mind. I know the ‘sleeping giant’ remark - while probably having been made - was fitted into the ‘proper’ situation by the movie makers.
And the follow up attacks, very probably meant to drive out the ‘round eyed devils’ as the island fortifications they had were secure and not just something put up overnight.
I also agree with your summation of the Hawaii situation, but again if they thought we were of a mind to ‘cut our losses and run’ they may have had selective targets based on that thought.
I guess the real fly on the wall we want to get our hands on is the one that was around for the initial planning discussions right up through the attack.
When you figure that the Japanese limited their attack to Air and an occasional midget submarine it appears they didn’t expect any retaliation etc.... One could imagine at least they would have had a landing force on hand to secure the island - they certainly had the manpower - like I said, the fly on the wall would really be helpful.
Definitely NOT trying to start a ‘food fight’ with you etc, just trying to have a ‘civil’ discussion etc....