I agree -- and Pearl is waaaaay too exposed, as Adm. Nagumo pointed out for us in 1941. In fact, Navy exercises in the early 30's proved the same point (Japanese officers observing the exercises, of course), but FDR had other ideas -- namely, about baiting the Japanese tiger. The Establishment has never admitted he did that. In fact, that would make an excellent litmus test someday, for who'll be allowed to vote and hold office in a reconstituted America.
Yards like that need to be upstream of Suisun Bay, hell, up the Russian River somewhere where they can't be reached without overflying powerful defenses ..... and in Atlantic basin, they ought to be in the Mississippi River or Galveston Bay, somewhere in the protected waters of the Gulf of Mexico. Even Chesapeake Bay, when you think about it, is exposed -- first hostile act by the Germans was to lay 24 acoustic mines in the shipping channels there. U-boot came up into the bay by dead of night, slick in, slick out. Not good.
I'm thinking of one port east coast USA in the Pearl Harbor sense. Add to that an interstate in plain sight of the carrier piers and the interstate by-pass in sight of one of two Naval shipyards.