One need not sink a ship to cause trouble. It is (as the told me at Ranger School) sometimes better to wound an enemy so as to impose and expensive burden on the other team. In the same way, a damaged ship full of injured Marines would be more useful to the Japanese than a ship sunk full of dead Maines.
A damaged ship requires tugs, shipyard space and diverts industrial capacity from new builds.
Isn’t it nice that all of this horror was avoided?