American carriers were absent to prevent them from being attacked
American carriers were absent to prevent they are being attacked, The United States had three aircraft carriers in the Pacific in December 1941. USS Saratoga was in a scheduled refit in Puget Sound. Lexington and Enterprise were both returning from missions during which they reinforced Marine aviation groups, the former at Midway, the latter at Wake Island. Had Enterprise been on schedule, the carrier would have entered port on December 6, after dispatching its air groups to the Naval Air Stations at Pearl Harbor. Heavy weather encountered during its return from Wake Island delayed its arrival by about 24 hours. During the attack, Enterprise was about 200 miles from Pearl Harbor, and planes from its air groups arrived over Hawaii as the attack was underway. Additional aircraft arrived following the Japanese raid and were subjected to friendly fire by the understandably jittery gun crews on the island.
The fact is, the battleships of the US Pacific Fleet were considered by the Navy at the time as the most valuable asset present at Pearl Harbor. Although the United States had other battleships which could be transferred to the Pacific, including Colorado, Idaho, New Mexico, New York, and Mississippi among others, it could ill afford the loss of the ships destroyed on December 7. It was from the Japanese the United States, and Great Britain, learned the value of aircraft carriers massed together as an offensive weapon at sea. With a couple of notable exceptions, the battleship was relegated to task force defense and shore bombardment following the attack on Pearl Harbor. The majority of the surface engagements which occurred in the Pacific during the war involved cruisers and destroyers. Fleet actions involved aircraft carriers, usually well out of sight of each other.