You should read Shattered Sword, by Parshall and Tully. It is one of the most comprehensive accounts of Midway I've ever read, and dives deeply into Japanese ar

You should read Shattered Sword, by Parshall and Tully. It is one of the most comprehensive accounts of Midway I've ever read, and dives deeply into Japanese archival sources in a way that the vast majority of histories of Midway do not. The last third of the book is a discussion of the effect that Midway had on the war. The short version is that the Japanese did not have the merchant tonnage available to support operations already in progress at that point in the war. An invasion of Japan would've required landing several infantry divisions, across thousands of miles of open water, too far from any airstrips for land-based aircraft to support them. The Hawaiian islands are small, but Oahu, Maui, and Hawaii are big enough for maneuver warfare. An American loss at Midway would've been a huge setback, especially had all three carriers been lost. The rate of commissioning of new Essex-class ships, not to mention the light and escort carriers, however, would've more than made up for the loss by mid-1943, and the Japanese simply did not have the industrial capacity to sustain a long naval war of attrition. An American victory was not inevitable, but there's a fairly strong case to be made that the means by which the war was begun, by a sneak attack, had incensed the American populace sufficiently that even further serious naval defeats wouldn't've sapped their willingness to fight on. Indeed, several more American carriers were lost throughout 1942 (Hornet and Wasp), as well as the calamitous loss of four cruisers at Savo Island.