Lieutenant Commander Otoji Nakamura, decided to terminate her patrol and make for Kwajalein, which she reached on 28 December 1941. January–May 1942 After undergoing initial repairs at Kwajalein, I-68 got back underway on 31 December 1941 and proceeded to Kure, Japan, arriving there on 9 January 1942 for further repair work. During her stay at Kure, Nakamura boarded the flagship of the Combined Fleet, the battleship , on 17 January 1942 and briefed the commander-in-chief of the Combined Fleet, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, and his staff on the depth-charge attacks the U.S Navy had made against I-68 in Hawaiian waters. On 31 January 1942, Lieutenant Commander Yahachi Tanabe took command of I-68, and on 20 May 1942 she was renumbered I-168. Second war patrol: Battle of Midway Assigned to support Operation MI, the planned Japanese invasion of Midway Atoll in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, I-168 was one of 13 submarines that formed the Advance Expeditionary Force. With her repairs completed, she departed Kure, Japan, under Tanabe′s command on 23 May 1942 and headed for Kure Atoll, west-northwest of Midway, which she reconnoitered on 31 May 1942. On either 1 or 2 June 1942, according to different sources, she arrived off the northwest coast of Midway itself and spent three days observing Midway on the southern horizon through her periscope by day and through binoculars at a range of at night, reporting "unusually frequent patrol aircraft launches," an indication the forces on the atoll had been alerted to the impending Japanese attack. She made her first periscope reconnaissance of Midway′s Sand Island on 2 June, and on 3 and 4 June she circumnavigated Midway, providing weather reports to Combined Fleet headquarters. The American aircraft carriers deploying to oppose the Japanese invasion had passed through the area of the Japanese submarine patrol line before the submarines of the Advance Expeditionary Force arrived on their patrol stations, and — other than I-168, with her vantage point off Midway — none of them made contact with American forces before the Battle of Midway began on 4 June 1942, when aircraft from the Japanese aircraft carriers , , , and attacked Midway. I-168 observed the Japanese airstrike from her patrol station off the atoll. Later in the morning, U.S. Navy carrier aircraft inflicted fatal damage on Akagi, Kaga, and Sōryū, but Hiryū avoided damage and launched a strike which badly damaged the American aircraft carrier .