When we talk about "blackbirding", we often are talking about the enslavement of Pasifika peoples to work in labor camps, plantations and mining. But there was more to that. Blackbirding also lead to the trafficking of Pasifika women. 1/3

William Hayes, an American sea captain, kidnapped over 500+ women mostly from Kosrae & Manihiki to work in "legal" brothels in America, Asia and Europe. According to American missionaries, Kosraen girls as young as 5 were "body snatched" at night & take on these ships of death. 2

The result of foreign disease and women being stolen helped to collapse the population of Kosrae and the Cook Islands. 3/3