Yokosuka, Kanagawa

This handmade sign photographed by Tomatsu was located near the U.S. naval base in Yokosuka. Two years later Tomatsu wrote of life around another base: “Before the base was built, [Koza] was a quiet farm village of only 8,000 people. Now the population is 65,000, and Koza is a devouring city. At night, the population grows to 100,000. Bars, cabarets, hotels, restaurants, pawnshops and souvenir shops were suddenly built in screaming colors, like sets for Western movies, and girls collected, literally in front of the gates. A screaming-color town is a sake-drinking and sex town. It smells of the gunpowder of the Vietnam War. Stacks of dollars fly in the air.”