Right, east across the southern pacific would make sense if there were refueling stops. But in terms of going west they wound up going via Indonesia which the J

Right, east across the southern pacific would make sense if there were refueling stops. But in terms of going west they wound up going via Indonesia which the Japanese busy invading, yet Fiji, Kiribati, and Hawaii weren’t being invaded (and Fiji never was, not sure about Kiribati). There may have been naval traffic they would have to overfly they were concerned about I suppose.