In the sweltering humidity, 20 Chinese women sit and stand silently trimming loose threads from Calvin Klein T-shirts in an open garage just one block away from the glittering main street of Saipan.
While Japanese tourists around the corner shop for T-shirts as mementos of their trip to a tropical island paradise, these imported workers are labouring to produce top fashion labels in shocking conditions.
The sweatshop is invisible from the street, with no signs. A truck is parked in the garage, in the back of it a worker sorts the garments. At makeshift tables under the glare of fluorescent lights, labourers hunch over the piles of garments.
A Chinese supervisor walks between the tables, barking at workers who are falling behind. They dare not look up at the unannounced visitors.
There is no air-conditioning, one side of the garage has no wall and wind blows rain inside. Sacks of clothing lie on the ground, stamped with the name of a Hong Kong garment manufacturer on the island.
When approached, the supervisor refuses to identify the owners, 'I don't like foreigners sticking their noses in,' she yells in Mandarin.
So it goes in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, a US territory in the middle of the Pacific ocean, 2,500 kilometres from Hong Kong, which has so badly treated its largely imported mainland Chinese workforce, that garment manufacturers are now facing a US$1 billion (HK$7.74 billion) legal action spearheaded by a Californian law firm.