As far as time zones go, Pearl is five time zones east of the point of sinking, which is in the same time zone as Japan.
Let's pretend that the Japanese reported the sinking at 2000 February 20, 1944. Code breakers at CINCPAC at Pearl would report the sinking at their local time: 0100, February 21, 1944. History books would probably pick up a mixture of the two sources without correction for time zone. Therefore, with the 5 hour difference, books can easily have a sinking being reported after the demise of the reporter.
War and history are messy subjects, subject to intentional and unintentional distortion. Treating a game as some kind of a historical shrine is clearly inappropriate.