Twilight of the Gods: War in the Western Pacific, 1944-1945 (The Pacific War Trilogy Book 3)

by Ian W. Toll

Bomb damage was evident everywhere at Yokosuka, and many of the facilities were filthy. A marine officer recalled, “They had evidently given up; the floors in the barracks had not been scrubbed in months, they were half an inch or an inch deep in mud. The facilities were in terrible conditions. The cesspools were emptied daily and the waste matter carried away in wooden carts and oversized buckets, all of which leaked. We had swarms of flies in the streets, in the barracks, in the mess halls, and it took us several months to renovate the sewage system to clean up this place. I was worried about the health of the men.”26 When Admiral Halsey went ashore later that afternoon, he found the officers’ club “overrun with rats of an extraordinary size and character.”