What if Hawaii had remained independent?

If Hawaii had stayed sovereign and hosted no American port, where would Japan have struck?

Probably the Philippines, or Japan might first create a pretext to seize Hawaii for its own strategic use.

A mainland carrier strike remained difficult, leaving the Philippines as the nearest established American target. Japan might instead manufacture a reason to occupy independent Hawaii and use it to improve its position before confronting the United States. That possibility belongs within a deteriorating Japanese-American relationship stretching back to Perry's Black Ships. Later racial and treaty disputes deepened Japanese suspicion of American intentions. Mutual misunderstanding then made coercion look to Washington like a path to Japanese concession while Japanese leaders increasingly interpreted it as being forced into a corner.