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Actually, there are indications it was not a feint to draw the Americans away from Midway, and if you examine the timeline, it appears that it was not.

There is an excellent book, very rigorously researched (recommended to me by a Freeper) named "Shattered Sword" (written in 2005) and it gives a larger side of the Japanese story than has ever previously been told. (almost all accounts are from the Western side, and the Japanese side has not been researched as deeply...until this book.

The book has a lot of support from many well known authors who have previously written on the Battle of Midway and are considered authorities on the subject, so it has some cache there as well.

Their assertion in "Shattered Sword" is that it was NOT a feint, for the simple reason that the timing would not fulfill the purpose of a feint, to draw off American forces in Pearl Harbor. This is the Wikipedia entry on this theory, and it has become somewhat widely accepted: "...However, historians Jonathan Parshall and Anthony Tully (Shattered Sword)have argued against this interpretation, stating that the Japanese invaded the Aleutians to protect their northern flank, and did not intend it as a diversion..."

I agree with it, since the simple reason is that the Japanese began their assault on Midway on June 4th, on schedule...the day after the Japanese began their assault on Dutch Harbor...on schedule...June 3rd. Both attacks were intended to be surprise attacks, and largely succeeded in many respects. (The Japanese did not know we had broken their code, and assumed the American carrier forces would still be in or near Pearl Harbor.)

It is 2300 miles from Pearl Harbor to Dutch Harbor, a steaming distance at 20 knots of about four days. If it were intended to be a real diversion, they would not have attacked Dutch Harbor the day before they attacked Midway, because then we would have been able to make a choice (if we hadn't already cracked their code) which one was more important to us to defend, since both attacks occurred nearly simultaneously.

If it had been a real diversion, they would have attacked say, five days before the Midway attack to give the US fleet enough time to get up there from Pearl, and then it would have taken them about three days to make it back down to Midway, which would have been useless, as the Japanese would likely have aircraft operating from the island at that point, and we can all guess how the US fleet would have fared at that point in the war when they wandered into the radius of land based aircraft AND the radius of enemy carrier based planes at the same time...it likely wouldn't have gone well.

But as it was...the attacks were nearly simultaneous and on time, which indicates it wasn't a diversion.

It is humorous to see many western authors slapping their foreheads at such an obvious piece of information that, all these years, had been accepted as gospel truth, and had actually originated from western military analysis with zero input from the Japanese, who didn't have enough high ranking officers from that point in the war left to correct the western experts. So, for all these years, it was taken as gospel truth until these researchers who wrote the book "Shattered Sword" did the analysis from scratch with any available data, and came to quite a different conclusion.

From what I see, as radical a change in this look at history as it is, most experts have done a sheepish head slap, but to their credit, most who have taken the time give kudos to, and support the new theory.

It makes sense to me...I hope I didn't butcher it too badly in the telling. I had to rent the book, it was too expensive for me to buy...:(

If you can get your hands on the book, I highly recommend it. Having been in the Navy and been exposed to damage control procedures, I have found it somewhat puzzling that the Japanese fared so badly at keeping their ships afloat (in comparison to us). It didn't make sense to me until I read in detail about how damage control functions and processes were designed and built into their ships, and...they were just awful. One reasonably well placed bomb could take out one half of their water mains, and two could take out both. They Japanese were well trained in damage control, but when you go from hoses to buckets...well, you get the idea.