Early in the War both sides still thought that the Battleships were the deadliest danger to their plans. The Japanese mainly targeted the battleships at Pearl and left without a second strike against the oil storage facilities.
The Japanese then headed west and proceeded to conquer every target they had planned. US Subs weren’t deployed. In fact the US Navy was unprepared and dominated by a culture that assumed that the Japanese could be easily defeated. You see they thought the Japanese had poor eyesight and balance and believed their planes were made of bamboo and rice paper. Even if the US Subs had been around the torpedoes were terrible. Most wouldn’t explode, even with contact fuses.
Then why didn’t the Japanese attack with battleships?
“Most wouldn’t explode, even with contact fuses.”
The Mark 13 (aircraft) and Mark 14 (ship launched) torpedoes were the worst pieces of garbage a navy ever went to war with.
Gyroscopes that didn’t work, magnetic igniters that didn’t work, contact igniters that didn’t work, depth controllers that didn’t work....and a Bureau of Ordinance that was convinced the weapons were fine, it was the people using them that were the problem.