Booknotes

Ms. LOUNG UNG, AUTHOR, "FIRST THEY KILLED MY FATHER": Well, though my sister--I had a sister that passed away and died from starvation s--my father's death affected me tremendously, and I wanted just to put it out there. I wanted to put it out there that that's what happened to us first, and then it went on after that.

Ms. UNG: This is a picture of me when I had just got off the boat in Thailand at--at the refugee camp, and they snapped that picture of me as--as we were going in and giving us a number. So I was 10 years old, just off the boat in Thailand.

Ms. UNG: 1980.

Ms. UNG: Essex Junction, Vermont. I--it's--I remember being in the refugee camp, and there were people going in--and--and was trying to tell us what our new home was going to be like. And most of them missionary people, and one of the ways they--they did that was they would bring in movies and show it to refugees. And the--the movies that made it to Asia were all--all took place in Eld--either LA, San Francisco or New York, and--and then we landed in Essex.

Ms. UNG: I was 10 years old.

Ms. UNG: I was in--in Vermont until about '93, and then I left and moved to Maine, a bit more diversity. And in '97, I moved to DC.

Ms. UNG: I have a political science--bachelor in political science from St. Michael's College in Vermont.

Ms. UNG: The Vietnamese had invaded Cambodia in '79, and I am staying with my brothers and--and sister at the internally displaced camp and--internally displaced people's camp that the Vietnamese were setting up. They had caught a Pol Pot or--or a Khmer Rouge member. The Vietnamese had put him in prison, but the people rioted and demanded his release, and they actually--in the end, the Vietnamese soldiers gave him over to the people, and they had a public execution. They had a public exe--and I was nine years old when I witnessed my first public execution.

Ms. UNG: Yes. It's--you wished you didn't see it. I've spent so many years wishing I never saw it, but I saw it and it's been imprinted indelibly into my brain. And I've tried many years to get it out. It's too late. It was too late for them, and it was too late for me.

Ms. UNG: It's definitely left a life-long scar. The physical side of it: that I grew up very paranoid, I grew up very afraid. I grew up with a lot of hatred, and I grew up wanting to hurt other people. And that is--I've come to America and met really nice people and learned that people really are terrific, they really are kind and that they are not mean, that they're not out to kill me. You've got to heal that part. But the part that never healed: the fact that I miss my father, I miss my mother, I miss my sisters, and that never will heal.

Ms. UNG: Cambodia borders Thai--Vietnam, Laos and--and Thailand, as we can see. And when I was there in '75, the population of Cambodia was approximately seven million people.

Ms. UNG: I was born in Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia.

Ms. UNG: It's a Third World country. It's a bustling city. I can remember just in--in--we have tall buildings. However, our buildings were two- or three-story high only. We had paved roads, lots of vendors on a street. It's--it's just one of those very bustling cities. People wake up at five in the morning. It's very hot; it can get up to 100, 110 degrees and humid. And so people wake up very early, and then they set up shops on the side streets. And the parents would go every day--because there are no refrigerators—and shop. Kids go to school. And for me, I spent my days playing hopscotch outside of my house, walking around and eating a lot of junk food. One of my favorite was roasted cricket. And my sis and I spent a lot of time just playing ball and playing hopscotch on the sidewalk.

Ms. UNG: Yes.

Ms. UNG: He is in Vermont. He's living in Vermont with his wife and two children now. Khouy, the second one, my second brother, is in Cambodia. He's married and now has six children. Keav--she didn't survive the war. Kim is--has been living in France for the last 13 this past Saturday, he just moved to Vermont to live with my brother in--in--Meng. And Chou is in Cambodia, married with five children. And, of course, myself, I'm here in DC. And Geak, my little sister, did not make it through the war.

Ms. UNG: She was--actually, no. Keav was the first to go, my older sister.

Ms. UNG: She was living at a war camp at that moment, one of many war camps that the Khmer Rouge had, and she was--she had ate some poisonous food and--and her body just started giving out. And--and I think she had--I don't even know what the--the correct word is in Eng--English, but she had diarrhea and a lot of other poison food symptoms. And--and they sent her to the infirmary, and--and when we were told about it and when my father went--my parents went to retrieve her, she had already died.

Ms. UNG: She was barely 15.

Ms. UNG: I was--I was--oh, I should think I was six and a half years old.

Ms. UNG: For me, it's a story that wouldn't go away. When I was--when I was 16 or 15--I--I came to America as a 10-year-old, and in America, I--I didn't want this. I didn't want this face. I didn't want this mind. I didn't want the memory. I wanted--I wanted to be jazzy. I wanted to be an all-American girl. I wanted to be normal. I wanted amnesia. I played soccer, hit my head with the ball so many times. And then I learned that getting amnesia in real life is a lot more difficult than on soap opera--soap opera shows. That's how I was learning English. I'd watched "Guiding Light," you know, the TV shows. And I succeeded in--in suppressing the memory for the most part. You know, at night, there were nightmares. During the daytimes, I was pretty well adjusted.

But when I turned 15, around that age, all of a sudden my body started developing. All of a sudden I wasn't a child anymore and I couldn't hide behind being a child. And all--and--and when that happened, when my body changed, it did something to my mind. All of a sudden, the me--the memories started--came flooding out, and I didn't know what to do with it.

It was the first time I went through a severe depression. I had—I had a nervous breakdown, basically. I was on the brink of suicide. I didn't--didn't know what to do with it. And there were no one to talk to. There weren't any other Cambodians there in Vermont—Essex Junction, Vermont. The counselor I saw, I felt like I was giving more of a history lesson. I didn't feel like I could talk to anybody.

And a teacher of mine, a Mr. Severens, encouraged me to write. He encouraged me to write because I wrote my story in an essay, and it came back with an A+++ on it without any red marks for bad and incorrect grammar. And that was the time I wrote that first draft. I wrote it six months later. You know, I wrote it through dinner, I wrote at night, I wrote in class. I had over 200 pages of handwritten materials, and most of that were stream-of-consciousness writing. And that is really the first draft of the book. I took that journal and diary and then made it into the book.

In turning it into a real book, of course, I've had to go a lot and--and look at the history. I had to restudy it. I went back to Cambodia four times last year and talked to my siblings and my cousins and my aunts. I had--my brothers all contributed informations. My brother Khouy in Cambodia wrote 100 page, approximately, of our history and our life in Khmer. And then my brother Meng in Vermont, because I--I don't--I don't know how to write Khmer very well, he had to translate it into English. And in a way, this--this is a family project.

Ms. UNG: The Communist guerilla group--the Communist guerilla group in--in Cambodia that took over the country in 1975, that defeated the government in 1995, which--the Lon Nol government. So they were the Red Cambodians. Khmer is--is--is Cambodian. Rouge is red. And, supposedly, they were a color of red. They were a color for passion, meaning that they loved us and they loved the country.

Ms. UNG: Yes, it was a French colony.

Ms. UNG: It was a French colony in the early 1900s. Yeah. I don't--unfortunately, I don't have the specific date on my--in my mind right now.

Ms. UNG: For about--I believe about 100 years.

Ms. UNG: Yes.

Ms. UNG: He was the king--he's now king of Cambodia, and he was prince of Cambodia then. He was put in--on the throne of being king of Cambodia when he was--at the young age of 19. But then he abducted--he abdicated his throne to be prince in order to work in poli--to be involved in politics.

Ms. UNG: No.

Ms. UNG: Yes.

Ms. UNG: The Khmer Rouge, during its reign from April 17th, 1975, to the first few weeks of January in '79, in--in their three years, eight months and 21 days' reign, 1.5 million to 2 million people died due to starvations, disease, forced labor and execution.

Ms. UNG: That's a really good question. I wish I knew the answer for sure. There are a lot of theories out there. The Khmer Rouge, when they took over the country in 199--1975, I was in Phnom Penh. I was playing hopscotch. And I remember just fighting with my sister and playing hopscotch. I mean, one of the other things that my—my sister and I used to do a lot was--in Cambodia, it's very hot, in a tropal country--a tropical country. There are a lot of black ants. And one thing that--that we used to do a lot was we would watch the ants march from one place to another. And--as any other children in any other country, we had a magnifying glass, and we knew what to do with it. And we would tilt it to the sun when we got bored and killed a few.

When the Khmer Rouge came into the country, they ordered everybody outside of the--of--of the city to move to live in the countryside. Phnom Penh, at the time, was a popu--a city of a population of two million people. I remember all of us pouring into the street, like black ants being marched from one place to another. We didn't know where we were going to end up. We didn't know where we were going. And those with power--no longer my sister and I with our gla--magnifying glasses. There were soldiers with guns standing on either side of us.

And--and for us, that was a four-year death march. The Khmer Rouge moved everybody from the city to live in the countryside because they had hoped to build a country, an agricultural culture, where everybody would--society would be classless and--and casteless. People were made to work in the fields every day in our lives for--during those years. And, first of all, Cambodia at that point was turned into a virtual prison. We didn't have walls, but it was a prison.

The laborers and the villages that we lived in were more like labor camps. In these camps every day was a Monday; every Monday a workday. There was no looking forward to hump day on Wednesday. There was no Friday. There was no Saturday. There was no Sunday. There were no holidays. Every day was a workday. Each workday, 12, 16 hours. And that was their way of wanting to create an agricultural society. And people were overworked and they were not fed, so they died due to starvations.

Ms. UNG: Lon Nol was the su--was--was the government that was put into power when Sihanouk was overthrown in 1970.

Ms. UNG: My father is the lone--the--the two lone pictures on the--on your left. Picture of my mother. And you can see she was very beautiful, and she was 5'7", towers over most Cambodians and was considered an Amazon in our culture. My father, picture below h--hers. She--he was a captain in the military police and even during the Lon Nol time worked as the Royal Secret Service. And then in the right, my--a picture of my mother on the left with my--with her sister, and another younger picture of my father, which is the picture on the left.

Ms. UNG: To survive, we knew right away that we would be in danger. We knew right away because the Khmer Rouge culture at that time, they only valued those--the people who could basically grow rice, work in the land. Those were the people had--that had any worth. The rest of us were easily destroyed, didn't mean anything, were easily dispensable. We knew we were in danger because one of my father's political positions and in being a military police. We also knew we would in dang--be--be in danger because we're part Chinese and we're a lot lighter in skin and that we were educated. We all spoke a couple of different languages.

And most of all, we didn't know how to work the land. We didn't know how to work the land. We--when we left the country, we posed as peasants. We posed--my father lied and said that he was--he worked as a person at the port carrying things from one place to another. My mother was a seller in a market. We--we posed as peasants and hide our identities.

Ms. UNG: We had a big house. I mean, of course, in--in comparison to the US, it was probably a--a small house, but it was--it was nice. I mean, I had a bedroom that I shared with my three sisters, and my--my brother had their own bedrooms. And we had a living room. We had a kitchen. Yes, we--nice stairs and--and tiles. We had everything we needed and want. We...

Ms. UNG: That's my mother holding a sister and my two brothers, and sitting is my grandmother and my mother's sister and brother.

Ms. UNG: Yes.

Ms. UNG: Yes. And I was--I was a very spoiled child, and I--I—the only thing I had to concern myself with was going to school three times a day. I went to Chinese school, I went to Khmer school, I went to French school. And all the chores--we had some maids, helpers, to do it all for us.

Ms. UNG: That's a great photograph. That's a picture of my brother--my--my three sisters and my brother, and I think just--probably...

Ms. UNG: I am the smallest one. I'm the one with the attitude. It's--it--it brings me so much joy to--to look at them because for 17 years I never knew what I looked like as a kid. We didn't have—the only picture I had of myself for 17 years in America was the picture of the front cover of the book.

Ms. UNG: That's a picture of my sister--my sisters, and I'm the one with--without shoes a--and pants.

Ms. UNG: They were hidden. We didn't--17 years I was in America. The only picture I had of myself was the cover of the book, and it doesn't look so war-torn and ragged. That's the only picture I could remember and the pic--only picture I had of me.

When I decided to turn--to write the book, I went back to Cambodia, went back and talked to the villagers and were able to find pictures. Some of them had cut the pictures and gave them to us. And my brother had gone back to the apartment we lived in, in Phnom Penh—other people had moved in and since claimed it to be their home. But they actually kept the pictures. We left so quickly that everything was still about. And when they came back and took the--the apartment, they kept the pictures--miraculous--an--and gave it to us.

Ms. UNG: That's my sister Chou when she was 18 in--that was her—on her wedding day, looking beautiful and golden.

Ms. UNG: Yes. Yes.

Ms. UNG: Eight days. I don't physically remember it--the days. I remember the walk. And my brothers were able to fill me in with the days and--and dates later. I was five years old and didn't want to walk. I want to play--I want to walk when I want to walk. I want to run when I want to run, but I didn't want to go on a death march. And...

Ms. UNG: Two million people from Phnom Penh left. In a span of 72 hours, they emptied a city of two million people down to maybe a couple of thousand people who stay--who--who--with the Khmer Rouge and--let stay behind to do their work.

Ms. UNG: No. As far as I--almost as far as I can see in front of me and behind me, there were always people. They were always pots clanging against each other, kids crying, people talking, and the shuffling of feet on gravel; always people dragging as far as--as far as you could see.

Ms. UNG: The same outfit I wore for--for seven days. I--I had on—I think a pair of--of yellow shorts and shirt, which turned gray after eight days of not having a place to sleep an--and wash.

Ms. UNG: In the beginning, my mother and father were very, very smart. Even the Khmer Rouge said us to pack as little as we can to sustain for three days and then we can return. My father packed a lotof food. He packed all the rice we had and some canned food and—and other preserved meats. We ate that for a while but there were nine of us. There were nine of us and--and we finally ran out of food. And whenever we stopped for the evening, my brother and--and my father and--and other older siblings would just scrounge the countryside for food and pick berries and roots and--and whatever they can find.

Ms. UNG: We ended up in the first village, Krang Truop, which was where my uncle and aunts were living at.

Ms. UNG: We stayed there for a few months. My uncle was considered part of a base people group. During the Khmer Rouge regime, people were separated into basically two categories. There were the base people, full-fledged citizen of the Khmer society. They were considered the indispensable group. They--they--it--being base meant that they always lived in the countryside. They've never lived in the--the city to be corrupted by Western and foreign influence. And so they--they were considered to be the pure Khmer.

And then there were the new people like myself who all evacuated from the cities. And there were many other cities in Cambodia and they were all evacuated. So my uncle had certain privilege in the village because he was a base--base--he was a base person. When we first lived there, we, of course, pretended to be peasants. No one knew what--who we we--really were and every day my father would go an--my--my father, mother and siblings would go and work in the field and my sister and I would--went and take the cows to pasture in—in the grass.

Ms. UNG: My sister died probably a year into the Khmer Rouge. She died it--when we moved to another village, actually.

Ms. UNG: When the--new people were always arriving and they were always being ele--being located--being moved from one village to another. And every time ne--a new--a new family or new families come into the village, we always held our breath. We always hoped it's people we didn't know. And at one point, someone from--one of the new families that came into the village where we're at, we actually thought that we kind of knew them. We weren't sure. They looked familiar, but we couldn't take the risk. We coul--we weren't sure if they traveled in the same circle we did or lived in Phnom Penh or they knew my father. But we couldn't take the risk. And every time we thought someone might come in that would recognize us, we would leave.

Ms. UNG: We went to the next village--we went to Ro Leap.

Ms. UNG: You know, on--on the trek I think it took us a day to get there. And, of course, during this time--the whole time, during the Khmer Rouge regime, for the four years, calendar was banned, clocks, any kind of machineries that tell times were banned--radio, TV, newspaper, gatherings, meetings. So--and again, every day was a Monday. We really didn't know month to month, day to day and we could only tell from the sun in the sky or the moon in the--position of the moon in the sky. But it--it took us a day to get there, I think.

Ms. UNG: He...

Ms. UNG: ...was 42. He--he died a year into it.

Ms. UNG: Yes. Approximately one year into it.

Ms. UNG: We'd been hiding. We'd been hiding and we were pretty successful at it and--you know, I--I was six and we'd been living for about a year under this hiding and--and safe. And I--I--I got to a point I even fooled myself into thinking that maybe we were safe. It was complete shock when two soldiers came and they asked for my father--they asked for my father and my father asked why and they said they needed to take my--they needed my father to go with them to move an ox cart out of the mud that was stuck an--and they were traveling with. And--and we asked them when my father was going to come back and--and they said tomorrow. He didn't come back tomorrow. He didn't come back the next day. We found out a few days later that he was executed.

Ms. UNG: I'm trying not to at the moment. Yes.

Ms. UNG: Quite a few times.

Ms. UNG: Yes, it's still deathly hard.

Ms. UNG: I do. I do.

Ms. UNG: Why? I just didn't want to give them my mind. They might have won their battle for four years, they might have succeed taking four of my families, but they're not going to have my mind.

Ms. UNG: Yes. I was conscious of wanting to live because my father wanted me to live. I want--I was conscious of wanting to do what he wanted me to do. Living--I don't know if it was ever--I don't know if I ever said to myself, `I'm going to defeat them. I'm going to win. I'm going to live. Certainly it was--if something happened to me, my parents would be very sad. It would be a betrayal to my father—it would be a complete betrayal to my father. And God darn it, I'm just too hungry to even think about it so I'm going to go and get some food.'

Ms. UNG: My father was--he was a great man. He was--he--he—he loved me and--and that was so wonder--that was wh--what kept me alive is I knew that my parents were so completely in love with me. Of course, now back--I was five years old and I'm--and the world revolved around me, and I'm sure a lot of other children felt that way, but I was the sixth children of seven. My little sister was still a baby and she was cute. I was five. I was cute enough to be everybody's favorite. I was cute enough to know how to manipulate people. I was cute enough to know how to be cute, and I was very well-loved.

My father thought I was very special. I'm sure everybody—every foddy--father thinks that, but I believed him 'cause he always tells the truth. My father encouraged me to be precocious and to be clever and--and to run around and ask questions, whereas my mother always kind of worried about grow--me being able to grow up to be a proper lady, to speak properly, to walk properly, to sit properly. My father said, you know, `Do whatever you want to do, just have a good time. Just come back at night. Don't get lost.'

Ms. UNG: That night, we waited. It was devastating. It was devastating, 'cause my father was the brick of the family. I mean, he was--he was our strength. He was our mind. He was the glue that kept us together, and we didn't know if we would be able to make it without him.

Ms. UNG: My bro--my older brothers were already at work camps at that moment, and my mother--my mother knew that--and--and the—she must've had discussions with my father, and I know she did. They knew that--that the Khmer Rouge weren't going to stop at my father. They were going to go after all of us. The paranoia was such that they were afraid the children of the people they took away would rise up and rebel. And she knew that if we wanted to survive, we had to split and separate, so she gathered all of the siblings together, those that were still there--I was barely eight, my sister was barely 10, my brother was barely 12, and my other sister was--was four--and she said, `It's time for you to go. I don't want you--I can't have you here. You go north, you go south, you go east, you go west. Walk until you get to an orphanage camp.' And by that time, there were or--many, many orphanage camps all around the country. `When you get there, change your name. Don't tell each other. Don't come back.'

I was so angry at her. I felt so--I felt so rejected. I felt that my father loved me and wanted me, and my mother sent--was sending me away when I needed her most. And I got--and I stayed angry with her for many, many years. I stayed angry with her, 'cause I thought it was a weakness. I thought it was a n--a weakness. In writing the book, I now come to realize that that was an incredible act of courage to send all--out your kids and not knowing--into the war zone and not knowing if they would come back alive, hurt, tortured, but you had to let them go for that slim chance that they might live. That was an incredible courage. And I--I--I have--you know, I--I'm an adult. I have my place. I can--I can't imagine doing that, but it took me many years to understand that.

And now al--I also understand in writing that--and I didn't then—that as a mother, she knew me--and she must've--she--she knew me a lot more--a lot better than I knew myself. And she knew the buttons to push to make me go away, to make me come back. And she must've known that if she had shown any emotions and she had shown any resistance to not wanting to g--send us away, we would've clinged to her.

Ms. UNG: I ended up going to an--an orphanage camp and--and it...

Ms. UNG: And orig--I--I was first at a camp with--an orphanage camp with my sister, where we worked in a field, but then people were always making fun of me and--and taunting me and I got into a big fight. And the--the su--supervisor of the camp saw this and—and loved it--and loved it. And then she took me off and put me into sort of a military training camp, or for lack of a better word to describe it, a child soldier training camp. It--we didn't have such words to describe it then. All I knew was that they saw the rage in me. They saw the hatred in me and they wanted to foster that. And so they took the--an eight-year-old and--they took me at that time, put me in the camp where they put weapons into my hand--knives, guns, ax, axes, hoes--and then they taught me and--and encouraged me to even be more--to e--to be even more hateful.

Ms. UNG: Mm-hmm.

Ms. UNG: We--there were only four of us with her, and three of us left and the youngest one stayed behind with her.

Ms. UNG: Geak.

Ms. UNG: Yes, Geak.

Ms. UNG: Yes?

Ms. UNG: Gim left, and Ju and I left.

Ms. UNG: This is a picture in Cambodia. That's Ju, and then--and...

Ms. UNG: Yes, the--the one in the white shirt with the black pants, the beautiful woman. And she's still living in Cambodia and--it's her children, the girl on the right, and--and she's still there and she's the--the one also--on a--the one that got married. She's still in Cambodia. She and I left together.

Ms. UNG: We were Buddhist.

Ms. UNG: For us, it means--I--I--I'm not a practices—practicing Buddhist at--at the moment. I--I kind of lost faith when--when my father was killed. But for my father and my family, it meant that we, as human beings, were part divine. God is not something that's outside of us. God is not something that will come and save us. We, in--within ourselves, can become God, if we practice nirvana and practice our mind and meditate.

Ms. UNG: My father did. My father did. I don't know if the younger kids did--and I--I didn't remember seeing my mother, but my father--religion--religion was banned, so if you were caught practicing religion, you were persecuted or could be killed. But every once in a while, I could see my father going outside when--when--when it's dark and sit underne--on--on the grass and look up at the sky and meditate and pray.

Ms. UNG: I estimated I must've been half a day's walk away. And, again, at that time, there were no clocks, there were no calendars, so the only way I could tell time was the position of the sun in the sky, but I believe it's--it's probably half a day's walk, four or five hours.

Ms. UNG: At first, I went with my three brothers, my--my--my brother Gim and Ju. And then Gim split off, and Ju and I just couldn't separate, so we stayed together and we went to a first camp. And we didn't want to separate, until the supervisor saw that I--I--that they wanted--they wanted to put me into another camp and she forced me to leave.

Ms. UNG: About a year.

Ms. UNG: They trained me to kill enemies. An enemy meant everybody out there that were against the government. Besides from the physical training, which is fairly easy--it's easy to put some kind of weapon in a child's hand and say, `Do this and then I'll give you some food.' It's Pavlovian conditioning. But the mental training, the brainwashing that went on forever, every day, many hours each day, that was--that was hard to fight sometimes. That was hard to fight, because each morning and afternoon, you would sit and they would have all these propaganda messages, and then they would feel the hatred. And a lot of people believed that.

And the hatred is that we, the children of Cambodia, were pure. Everybody else wer--out there were corrupted, the adults. We were pure. We were going to be the savior of the--the Anka of the Khmer--Khmer Rouge--Khmer Rouge government, and that we were everything, that we were the most special. And because of that, because we're the future of the government, because everybody knew that we were going to be the ones to take the government to a higher place, they were all going to try and kill us.

Ms. UNG: Yeah. Yeah.

Ms. UNG: Yes.

Ms. UNG: Not in the village I was at. No.

Ms. UNG: Part Chinese.

Ms. UNG: My father is half-Chinese and my mother's full Chinese.

Ms. UNG: My mother was born in China, yes.

Ms. UNG: Before the war, there were a--lots of different skin color. There were definitely Thai there. There were a lot of Vietnamese there and a lot of--of just mixed-raced people.

Ms. UNG: We were light-skinned.

Ms. UNG: People would be much darker. They would have curlier hair. And you can recognize a--a Cambodian--a pure-raised Cambodian than--than the rest of us. They would have a lot of--a lot of Khmera would have darker lips, wider features, fuller features, where I think the Chinese and Vietnamese tend to have a smaller, slen--more slender face.

And, of course, it's the skin color, but that got harder to harder--harder and harder to recognize for two specific reasons. One, we were out in the sun every day, 10 hours a day, so we all got darkened. And two, by years later on, a lot of the Chinese and a lot of the Vietnamese were executed. They were the first groups to be executed.

Ms. UNG: 5'2".

Ms. UNG: It's pretty tall. It's pretty--yeah.

Ms. UNG: In Cambodia. I'm--I'm actually taller than the--I—than I--I--for the most part, there are people that are taller than me, but I feel--I feel a little bigger. My mother was 5' 6" and my--5'7". My--my--my uncle, on my parents' sides, were 5'10", 5'11" and I think--I think the war stunted our growth, most definitely.

Ms. UNG: Before the war, there were probably--I did--I didn't remember it, 'cause I was part of the privileged class. And, of course, we also had more money and--and that--you tend to not see the other side of--of life. During the Khmer Rouge, there was definitely discriminations. I was called--and I--I was teased a lot and taunted a lot by the other Khmera children, because I had skin--I had lighter skin. And there were times when I would just try and darken my skin with mud and try to put mud in my hair so that I would appear more Khmera and less Chinese.

Ms. UNG: Yes.

Ms. UNG: I lost one sister. I lost Gial, one sister, Kiav.

Ms. UNG: I lost my father and my mother and another young sister, Geak.

Ms. UNG: My--when I left the village--when she sent me away and forced me to go away, actually, I went to the orphanage camp and—and I just remember one situation. I think it's probably a year after I left. I just remember feeling just something wrong. My body was crying out. There was just--there was just pain. My mind was just hurting. And I snuck out of my camp and I went to see her in the village, and I found out that the Khmer Rouge soldiers had come and taken her and my little sister.

Ms. UNG: I'm assuming because they--they are the--real--no reason. They took so many people. They were--maybe put the connections with my father--maybe it was because of my father; maybe she wasn't contributing enough to working in the field; maybe my little sister cried too much; maybe they were sickly anyway and so the soldiers and the government didn't want to have to go on feeding them, if they're not working in the fields. I don't know.

Ms. UNG: Yes.

Ms. UNG: I haven't found their bodies. We don't know what happened to them for sure. I know they loved us. We were their world. They would've done anything for us. There's no way in hell that if they lived, 20 years later, 10 years later, 10--five months later that they would not cross hell, they would not cross land mines, they not—would not cross fire zones to get back to us.

Ms. UNG: I remember s--going there. And--and when I found out the news, I--I had what scientists call--what psychologists call fushick amnesia. I lost three days of my life. I just blanked out. It was--was losing--my mind just shut down and--and I--and--and I ceased to be who I am today. It's just--my mind shut down, I blanked out.It's almost as if I went to sleep and I woke up three days later and I'm back at the camp. I don't remember what happened.

Ms. UNG: I got a lot more angry. I got a lot more angry.

Ms. UNG: I would've hurt you. I would've hurt you.

Ms. UNG: Yeah.

Ms. UNG: I like to say that I couldn't kill. I'd like to say I couldn't kill, but I would've, but I could.

Ms. UNG: No. I was very fortunate. I was young. They trained me. They trained me so that I would grow up to be the perfect citizen in mind and body. I was lucky. I was lucky. I was never put in the front line. I was too young. But I would've. I could've.

Ms. UNG: I stayed at the orphanage camp and--and was trained and stayed there for--for a year and just worked and lived and got angrier and angrier.

Ms. UNG: The Vietnamese invaded Cambodia. And, of course--and—and my orphanage camp got bombed--got bombed. It went into flames and--and that was a sign for me to take off and escape and run, and I did.

Ms. UNG: Yes.

Ms. UNG: Yes, Pithy.

Ms. UNG: She was my first friend in four years. For four years living in the Khmer Rouge, you couldn't trust anybody. You couldn't have friends. And she was my first friend. She was nine years old, maybe 10. We were hiding out in a bomb shelter and she was just right next to me. She was just crouching right next to me, and our shelter got hit. And, of course, instinctually, with your hands, you reach for your head or you reach for people. And I reached for her. And instead of where her head should've--be, there was now a hole. She got hit by--I don't know what the word is in En--shrapnel, I think, or a big piece of it. And--and there was her blood on me and--and--and--and parts of her brains, and I got up and ran away.

Ms. UNG: Oh. Gosh, 40, 30 feet, if even, maybe less. I was very close. I was very close, but I had--I had my grama, I had my scarf wrapped--wrapped around my head so you could even--you could only see my eye. The fear of living for four years fearing for your life, even though he was in a chair, he was tied up, there were hundreds of us surrounding him. In my mind, I was so afraid, I had to cover my face.I was afraid that what if he escaped? What if somehow he got loose in--from the chair and escaped? And if he sees my face, he's going to come after me.

Ms. UNG: Hundreds. Hundreds of people.

Ms. UNG: He was a Khmer Rouge member and...

Ms. UNG: I'm assuming probably mid-20s. Yeah.

Ms. UNG: That I can remember.

Ms. UNG: Yeah.

Ms. UNG: Yes.

Ms. UNG: Yeah. It's another wo--it was a public execution. The way they opened it up was the leader of the group--of the Cambodian group asked volunteers from the crowd to come and kill the man, and two women volunteered. And after he was killed, another woman went up and--and stabbed him and supposedly, allegedly, she knew him. He was a Khmer Rouge member in her village and he was--he was the one that killed her family.

Ms. UNG: Here in DC, in--in--in my--in my house and in--in my office sometimes, when I couldn't--when I couldn't put it away. It was—I was obsessive. I was listening to Cambodian music all the time. I was--I was either going to write and--and do this final battle, or I was just going to die trying.

Ms. UNG: I wish I didn't have to.

Ms. UNG: The book--I think--I--I--in writing it--and I think I—I was very restrained with the violence. That is just one sections where it was just fact. It was just there. I--I--I made it--I made it a focus to write a family story, to write about grace and dignity, that people as human being can live, even in the most extreme circumstances--whether you can--you live--you live life with that certain dignity for 24 hours, 24 days or a month, that you can do it. And that was--that was just fact. That was just there.

Ms. UNG: No.

Ms. UNG: Yeah.

Ms. UNG: Yeah. It was there. It was there. I went there, because it was there. It was in front of me. Blood splattered on me and it's in my mind.

Ms. UNG: In--in the '80s, there were that wave of boat people coming to Thailand, and so we--we--my oldest brother and I got ourselves on a boat and went from the--Cambodia to Vietnam, Vietnam to the refugee camp in Thailand.

Ms. UNG: Gosh! We were at the camp for a few months. And--and, I guess, the process that--that--you come, they take your picture, it's like the one on the cover of the book, and then they put the pictures in refugees resettlement programs all over the world and then people sponsored you over. And we were there for about five months and—and we didn't have a choice. We didn't have a choice. We didn't know anything about America. We didn't speak any English. We didn't have any contacts in America, didn't know anybody from America, and--and so we didn't have a choice. It's just a matter of putting on—marking on--on--on the refuge paper that you want to leave. We didn't even know if we were going to end up in America, in France, in Australia. And we were sponsored by a chur--the Holy Family Church group in—in Essex Junction.

And I remember as--remember the missionaries would come in and show us the movies--and I think I already said it--the movies were all—were all about San Francisco, LA and New York. And I asked my brother, `Is--is our new home going to be like that?' And we all s--we all were--were sure that it was going to be like those places. We were in a complete shock--shock when we landed in Essex Junction, Vermont.

Ms. UNG: Our sponsors. Our sponsors. The Costelos, the Lucenties, other members of the church group. I--and I was--I--God, I remember my brother had bought me a white shirt--a crisp, white shirt that we folded and--and I put it on so quickly that the buttons were buttoned wrong. When I got off the plane, there were just flashes of cameras and it was a little scary--it was a little scary.

Ms. UNG: Khmera. My brother spoke--and--and--and he--at that time, he already--he knew English a little bit, but I didn't know a single word. I might know my ABC's and `thank you,' but I didn't know a single word. Yeah.

Ms. UNG: We lived in Essex Junction, Vermont, and we lived in a little apartment on the--above the dentist's office.

Ms. UNG: My brother and sister-in-law. He was just 22 or so at the time.

Ms. UNG: Just the three of us. Yeah.

Ms. UNG: All that summer. We arrived on June tw--on June 20th, 1980. It's freezing! I remember it just being so cold and it was June. Of course, June in Vermont is cold still. And we--I learned English all that summer. I--I--of course, I learned spoken English. We watched TV. We watched TV every day. I watched "The Jetsons." I watched "Gilligan's Island." I watched a lot of soap operas, and that's how we learned.

But when I went to school and--and a teacher--and one of the first assignments in--in--in school was that we had to write in our journal--those little square manila folder journal--what we did during the summer. I didn't know the--the language. And there was a girl named Barbara, I still remember, sitting next to me. She wrote something and I copied what she wrote. When we handed it in to the teacher, the teacher called me over and said, `So you wrote that your grandmother came to visit.' And I said, `Sure.' I've been in a war. I'm taught not to ever disagree with adults. And she said, `So you wrote you got a dog and you went swimming and you went to Disney World.' And I said, `OK, if you say so.' And--and it was then that they found out that I didn't know how to write. They took me out of the third grade--they put me in the third grade--put me in the second grade and they had teachers coming in and taking me out of class. And then they just kept moving me up grades until I caught up. And I was still--I still graduated a year behind, but I caught up pretty quickly.

Ms. UNG: Winooski, Vermont.

Ms. UNG: Yes. Yes. Yes.

Ms. UNG: For about three years. I'm the spokesperson for the Campaign for a Landmine-Free World. And I got involved because, for one, Senator Leahy--Senator Patrick Leahy is our great senator from Vermont--when I landed in Vermont, it was such a blessing to know that--I read the papers--to know that we had a senator that knew and were concerned with human rights and was working a lot with land mines. And he created the Leahy War Victims Fund that assisted victims who were hurt by land mines in all parts of the world. And so I knew about land mines.

When I went back in 1996--'95, the first time, I just came face-to-face with this--the devastations that land mines are still causing all over my country.

Ms. UNG: That's a picture of me at the Anka Watts. Just me sitting, contemplating. And then this was done by a friend of mine, who just happened to walk by and ca--and--and caught the moment.

Ms. UNG: This was actually last year. And--and--and I love the picture, because the little girl just reminded me so much of me. In--in all parts of Cambodia, you couldn't go to a hospital, you couldn't go to a museum, you couldn't go to a movie theater, you couldn't go to a shop, you couldn't go to a bar without running into an amputee. There's supposed to be four to six million land mines still in Cambodia, and that is the war of the second generation. In Cambodia, it is no longer the soldiers that are killing parents, killing children, making children orphans. It's now land mines. Thatis the new soldier.

Ms. UNG: I thought about it. Definitely going to be going a lot. I don't--America's my home. I love America, but Cambodia's my heart. It's my heart. It's my conscience. Cambodia decide--helps me decide what's right and what's wrong and what actions to take. I don't think I can live in Cambodia. It's--I--I'm too outspoken politically and--and personally and otherwise. And there's still this paranoia in my mind that--my family live in a small village. I don't ever involve them with my work. When I'm in Cambodia working, I don't see them, I don't call them, I don't talk to them. When I'm finished, I disappear and I go visit them. I'm afraid that when I'm there and I say the wrong things, or I'm--or I'm out in the public, that I might put them in danger. Whether that's real or imagined, I fear it.

Ms. UNG: Only to people who--only to people who just doesn't really care and they're just asking to be--I think sometimes people--actually, no. I mean, I--I've told the stories and it--it's actually quite--for lack of a better term, they're therapeutic for me. Each time I tell it, I feel less trapped by it. Each time I tell it, it's almost as if I release it into the air a lot more and get it out of my mind so that it doesn't control my mind. It's not a cloud hovering my mind and--and that I wear, like, a metal hat. Each time I tell it, I release it. I release it t--out there. I release it out to the world for people to share and for people to get and for people to understand.

Ms. UNG: I think about 250,000--250--200 and--a little over 200,000--250,000.

Ms. UNG: In Seattle; in Lowell, Massachusetts; Rhode Island; Minnesota; and California, LA.

Ms. UNG: Thank you.