I haven't ever really spoken about this to anyone, but when I was litigating the so-called "comfort women" case, I went to the National Archives to obtain and read the testimonies of women and girls who were held in sex slave camps by the Japanese military following their release. 1/ - ThreadSky

ecmclaughlin.bsky.social • 3 days ago

I haven't ever really spoken about this to anyone, but when I was litigating the so-called "comfort women" case, I went to the National Archives to obtain and read the testimonies of women and girls who were held in sex slave camps by the Japanese military following their release.

1/

Comments

lisamorrison.bsky.social•3 days ago

No good emoji for this. I’m sorry you have to bear this and relive it with each new atrocity. Wishing you a peaceful mind.

jaredgannon.bsky.social•3 days ago

You have my deepest sympathies; 'secondary trauma' is a very real thing. I work in my local criminal justice system and see and hear very unpleasant things on a daily basis but those are just a drop in the bucket when compared to the events you have worked on. Take care of yourself please.

abbykbhomesleak.bsky.social•3 days ago

Oh God. I know. Trump is a sadist & Musk appears to be one too. It's not that they don't care. They are enjoying it. These Tate brothers make me sick just looking at them. How could any woman vote for them? After Roe? After knowing what Trump is? Evil is palpable right now.

lasleyg.bsky.social•3 days ago

I learned of the comfort women when writing a book about my father’s war in the Pacific. His ship beached at Iloilo in the Philippines. There, a revelation. While Dad’s war story covers many aspects of a massive WWII, the treatment of young women haunts me still. LETTERS FROM INSIDE THE WHALE.

taylorview.bsky.social•3 days ago

Your work is appreciated.

cyndirancatore.bsky.social•3 days ago

This needs to be shared more. Thank you for your sacrifice. I'm sorry you can't sleep.

cgruggi.bsky.social•2 days ago

You are correct. This must be shared long and wide and then DO NOT STOP keep sharing it! We must not be complicit, and we must resist.

too-long-a-name.bsky.social•3 days ago

Thank you for the thread. 🙏🏼 Unremediable cellular shame ought to be what every decent American should be feeling now if they choose to not to stand up. And yes, it will take few years to get the house cleaned up & get back to what America actually stood for.

- An observation from a faraway land.

pjwilliams2982.bsky.social•3 days ago

I had never heard of Comfort Women. Thank you for posting this important story about how these women suffered. Sending you compassion and healing.
There’s so much unknown and covered up history about the cruelty humans can inflict as well as endure.

climbingivy72.bsky.social•3 days ago

💔💔💔💔😭

underwhelmed72.bsky.social•2 days ago

I lived in Japan from 1985 to 1996 and I recall the stories of the struggles of these women, then. It led me to explore other horrors humans inflict on humans, such as the Burakumen, and the Koories, of Australia. Native women disappear in the states while outcries fall on deaf ears. Children raped.

lisafarrar.bsky.social•3 days ago

Thank you for this.

ericavogel.bsky.social•3 days ago

Oh I know about the comfort women. That you had to read the accounts is horrifying. I’m so sorry you carry that with you.

lioness2.bsky.social•3 days ago

I tried to read it, but I can't get through it. WTF is wrong with the people that are cheering this on? Sociopaths? WTF.

bettlu.bsky.social•3 days ago

kat86.bsky.social•3 days ago

I know. I don’t understand why more people aren’t as outraged

laughing-rat.bsky.social•3 days ago

Right now I can't get past how utterly helpless I, a regular citizen in the Midwest, am to stop any of this. I don't know what I can do, besides yell at my congresspeople, that could be of real assistance. I'm watching atrocities happen and there's nothing I can do about it except vote and hope.

climbingivy72.bsky.social•3 days ago

I am having the same feelings. 💔

evermoreart.bsky.social•1 day ago

This Saturday in Chicago, my friend! I’ll be there. The more of us out there, the faster we get our Country back. 💙🌟🇺🇸

https://www.teslatakedown.com/

panicatthedogpark.bsky.social•3 days ago

What Elizabeth says is true. And getting involved even if it can’t always be in person (rural areas—if that’s where you are—can be tough to navigate) is the only thing that really lifts the pall. A feeling of togetherness, communal goals and communal progress, is a huge lift. Even setbacks hurt less

ecmclaughlin.bsky.social•3 days ago

That is false. You can organize & get involved with organizations that are pushing back. You can join an immigrant rights org & ask how you can help. You can join a TeslaTakedown protest to undermine the speed of the destruction. You can talk to others about what’s happening. None of us are helpless

ericavogel.bsky.social•3 days ago

This all day long. People (white people) saying “there is no way I which I can be a beneficial participant in resistance” has got to stop.

Get a grip folks, we broke it (white people) we have to be the ones to fix it. GET INVOLVED.

ninaamenta.bsky.social•3 days ago

And, you can donate to the ACLU who are suing to get these men out of there. Thank you, Elizabeth, for the story.

lisao61.bsky.social•3 days ago

https://www.international.ucla.edu/cks/care/comfortwomen_speakup/267550

deetm2632.bsky.social•3 days ago

Thank you Elizabeth

cgruggi.bsky.social•2 days ago

ECM, thank you for your powerful thread. We must all NOT look away and we must RISE. Thank you.

reallydebs.bsky.social•2 days ago

You endured a lot to record these atrocities. We must never forget nor must we turn a blind eye to the present, current atrocities happening right now,. 💔😭

madukes.bsky.social•3 days ago

Wait til you hear what happened to Black people

America has always been this cruel and violent to women

ecmclaughlin.bsky.social•3 days ago

I know. That is one reason why I say in this thread that we have always been engaged in atrocities.

madukes.bsky.social•3 days ago

It’s THE significant singular atrocity towards one specific group racially in America and globally in conjunction with First Nations genocide.

It must be named as the most significant assault on humanity is the main narrative still today as white supremacy attempts to erase it.

rlab53.bsky.social•2 days ago

madukes.bsky.social•2 days ago

100% x a trillion

cieloazulnm.bsky.social•3 days ago

It's not just Black people but Indigenous women too. Women of all races have been battered, and still suffer because of their sex: sold, enslaved, uneducated, bartered, beaten, used and traded for sex and treaties, marriages and agreements. It's a story as old as time itself and must end.

madukes.bsky.social•3 days ago

#MMIWG2S 🧡 as I stated

Specifically First Nations, Métis and Inuit people in Canada 🍁

cieloazulnm.bsky.social•3 days ago

Here in the Southwest it is Pueblo, Navajo, Apache, T'Ohono O 'dam, Yaqui and many many others. It was & is a shameful practice.

madukes.bsky.social•3 days ago

🧡💔 still here too

saljl.bsky.social•3 days ago

@skyview.social please unroll

fokus.bsky.social•3 days ago

Weren't they ordered by a court to turn the plane around but refused? Shouldn't they be brought back since the court ordered they can't be sent there?

ecmclaughlin.bsky.social•3 days ago

Thereafter, my job was to digest those testimonies, draft them into a Complaint as well as a declaratory judgment motion, and do my best to provide the court with the facts (as well as the legal basis for relief).

I have tried for many, many years to forget the things I read.

2/

iechydda.bsky.social•3 days ago

These types of men think women are property. They also. think dogs are property. We all know that both are neither and that these are men whose brains are akin to serial killers. Many might think that is hyperbolic; but, science tells a different story.

ecmclaughlin.bsky.social•3 days ago

At the same time, my boss and other attorneys in my firm were litigating the Holocaust slave labor cases against Mercedes and others.

As a part of all that work, I spent a lot of time on the Hill and also in Europe to try to drum up international support for our cases.

3/

ecmclaughlin.bsky.social•3 days ago

I have tried for the last 2.5 decades to blot out some of what I was exposed to doing that work-- the stories of the teenage sex slaves who were tortured (I'll spare you the details) for the amusement of soldiers, the brutality, the abuse, the girls & women (some of whom I met as elders)

4/

ecmclaughlin.bsky.social•3 days ago

who were forced to service up to 40 soldiers A DAY, who were ranked by race after being kidnapped from their middle schools and town squares and shipped to foreign lands, and then called whores when they returned because the Japanese government said they were voluntary prostitutes.

5/

ecmclaughlin.bsky.social•3 days ago

And that's leaving aside the horrors of the Holocaust slave labor cases, which have been far more documented than what happened to the "comfort women," which to this day remains the largest unremedied crime against humanity against only women, in part because the Bush administration intervened

6/

ecmclaughlin.bsky.social•3 days ago

in our case and claimed that because international relations were implicated in the case, it should be dismissed. They won that argument, despite appeals all the way up to the Supreme Court.

There have been moments in the past 2.5 decades where I have had blowbacks, a kind of PTSD of sorts

7/

dianamcqueen.bsky.social•3 days ago

And Japan as a country kind of refuses to admit that it committed war crimes but so does America. A huge step in recovering from this would be to admit that it was done and Japan can't even do that. And this has low priority because the victims were mostly women. Misogyny in everything.

bzell.bsky.social•3 days ago

@unroll.skywriter.blue unroll

unroll.skywriter.blue•3 days ago

The thread as a shareable webpage: https://skywriter.blue/pages/did:plc:l3k4ivyknlg4yv4as4b6anmt/post/3lkyuvab5sk2i.

Powered by @skywriter.blue

beeafin.bsky.social•3 days ago

Thank you for bearing witness. Thank you for pushing forward.

kimberleymok.bsky.social•2 days ago

Thank you so much for the work you did to try and help the comfort women. Did a thesis on this issue and their stories are absolutely horrific to read. Will never forget the public testimony of one elder during my univ. years. She refused to give up on getting justice & I think about it often

corgimom5.bsky.social•3 days ago

Thank you for this. Is this really deportation? Doesn't this qualify as rendition? Doesn't the Venezuelan prison count as a concentration camp?

ecmclaughlin.bsky.social•3 days ago

It is a slave labor concentration camp and it’s not deportation because they weren’t returned to their countries of origin.

catsmyau.bsky.social•3 days ago

It’s kidnapping. Not only is our government violation people’s civil and human rights, they are committing crimes against them. There can be no immunity for this!

dianamcqueen.bsky.social•3 days ago

Ur probably aware of the daily protests for the justice of comfort women. They're global and yet there's hardly any movement from the powers that caused that harm. When you think about the stuff that America did to women in various ways against their wills. It makes you wonder if it'll ever be ok.

geneseedreams.bsky.social•3 days ago

Please know how deeply your work is appreciated. I can’t imagine what was required to hold yourself together as you did that work. I read deeply about the Holocaust as a teen and 20-something, but now I feel like I can’t breathe when I read or see that material. The cruelty is beyond my ken.

gj2blu.bsky.social•3 days ago

I did a voice over for a student’s masters, or CSU, Fresno doctoral thesis project some years back featuring testimonials (I believe) from “comfort women” ... (If interested, I’ll locate DVD and forward.)

teddt.bsky.social•3 days ago

Thank you Elizabeth, it's all so so upsetting. I appreciate you pulling your experiences out for us to get to the basic human rights and decency for all! We fight on, stand strong with our moral compass, planted firmly in our souls

ruthsf.bsky.social•3 days ago

Holocaust scholar here. Are you familiar with the concept of secondary traumatic stress (STS) or secondhand PTSD? Your horror and distress at reading this story reminded me how easily and frequently re-traumatization occurs and the silence in which it is shrouded.

joannapenabickley.bsky.social•3 days ago

🙏 I’ve recently worked with people who have used psychedelic treatments under medical supervision to unwind those cognitive horrors.

ecmclaughlin.bsky.social•3 days ago

I've done a lot of trauma therapy for this and other things. Yes, I'm aware of secondhand PTSD. Thank you for your work.

ruthsf.bsky.social•2 days ago

And, thank you, too, for your work. The personal costs to those of us who have borne witness are rarely acknowledged but I see you, for whatever that may be worth.

blocksincoming.bsky.social•3 days ago

I see people in their teens and twenties talking about how their habits of watching real life violent incidents traumatized them years later. People should be careful and understand it is harmful to the psyche in a similar way as smoking is for the lungs.

gmaval17.bsky.social•3 days ago

Men! Fucking men! That’s all I can think of when I read this! The men in my life are compassionate. However I really don’t know if they would follow the gang mentality of a group and commit such atrocities. It’s appears that many US in a trance with this Trump cult. Idk? Would they? To survive?

sekharn.bsky.social•3 days ago

📌

debbiewfleck.bsky.social•3 days ago

You should contact Sinmin Pak of Texas who has fought for comfort women for years and gathered petitions to get the Japanese government to apologize. She is on Facebook.

refinnej.bsky.social•3 days ago

💔

xandr-clark.bsky.social•3 days ago

Infamous criminal Donald John Trump has other people subjected to the punishments that he has earned.

dhernandez-helms.bsky.social•2 days ago

Read this thread and realize how deeply shameful, vicious and cruel our government is.

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