When Japan began the Pacific War on 8 December , the sisters sortied for the Bonin Islands with four other battleships and the light carrier Hōshō as distant cover for the fleet attacking Pearl Harbor , and returned six days later . On 11 March 1942 Ise and Hyūga sortied from their anchorage at Hashirajima to join the unsuccessful search for the American carrier force that had attacked Marcus Island a week earlier . Similarly they pursued but did not catch the American carriers that had launched the Doolittle Raid on 18 April .