Two words... Fog Nozzle

I think the differing attitudes extends beyond the respective carrier design philosophies.  You can pretty much say the same about the difference between A6M Zero and the Cat series of naval fighters.  Undoubtedly, the former was master of tight-turning dogfights as it was very nimble and had excellent range until the latter part of the war.  Unfortunately, Zero was not armored and especially lacked self-sealing fuel cells (these two things were left out to achieve better maneuverability and range).  By contrast, the less nimble American counterpart had these two key systems, which turned out to become very important.  (On the plus side, the American counterparts generally had superior climbing and diving rates.)