Construction of "Yamato" began in secrecy at the Kure naval base in 1937. She was completed soon after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, but had already been rendered obsolete by the Japanese themselves after their successful carrier-based attacks at Pearl Harbor and elsewhere. "Yamato", the largest battleship in the world, with nine 18.1-inch guns with a range of over 22 miles, became, in the words of a "Milwaukee Journal Sentinel" reviewer, a "70,000-ton white elephant the Japanese did not quite know what to do with".