Why Japan would verify a report of 12-inch American destroyers

How would the Imperial Japanese Navy react to a mistaken report that new American destroyers carried 12-inch guns?

It would see the design as self-defeating, then use ordinary public reporting and photographs to verify the visible armament and correct the error.

A destroyer carrying a 12-inch gun would be unable to absorb the weapon's recoil and firing loads as a practical combatant. Japanese planners would initially conclude that the United States had surrendered the destroyer contest through a disastrous design choice. They would still verify such an extraordinary report before building policy around it. The panel describes commissioning an American journalist to photograph and describe the new ships for a Japanese publication, avoiding obvious espionage while collecting visible facts. Because main armament cannot remain concealed once a ship is built, this open-source check would quickly expose the original intelligence error.