Suppose Japan, for whatever reason (mainly an extremely harsh crackdown on army officers who try to unilaterally create incidents) avoids the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937. However, it is still fairly hungry for Empire. As a result, it has it's sights on European colonies in the Pacific. WWII still breaks out roughly on schedule, but Japan takes advantage of the war in Europe to invade European colonies but does not attack the US. How plausible is this and what happens next?