Cambodian author relates harrowing tale to students

"I had a lot of hatred when I came to America; I had a lot of issues and scars to deal with," said Loung Ung.

By: Gwen Runkle
   Loung Ung was only 5 when Pol Pot’s genocidal Khmer Rouge overran Cambodia in 1975, forcing the entire population into the countryside and turning her childhood into turmoil.
   In just three years, both her parents and two of her siblings were dead and she was training to become a child soldier.
   Today, at 33, Ms. Ung is still scarred by her experiences, but has turned her tumultuous early life into a message of strength and courage with her book, "First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers."
   On Thursday, she brought her message to all ninth-grade students in the West Windsor-Plainsboro Regional School District at High School North in Plainsboro.
   Each student had to read her book as part of language-arts classes, said Ann Breitman, the high school language arts-literacy supervisor.
   At High School North, Ms. Ung spoke about her experiences and her mission to rid the world of land mines, and answered questions from the audience.
   She started out describing Cambodia before the Khmer Rouge.
   "I loved the green land, red earth, the cowbells — everything," she said. "When I was 5, I didn’t know about politics, policy or war — what was really important was playtime."
   One of her fondest memories is going to the movies with her family and sitting in her father’s lap.
   "We’d go to the movies and my father would buy me my favorite junk food, fried crickets," Ms. Ung said. "He’d sit with his leg crossed just perfect and I’d plop in his lap. When I’d get tired of holding my drink and Snack, all I had to do was nudge him and his palms would turn upward.
   "When you have parents, you don’t need cup holders, my father was my cup holder, my armchair, my everything," she continued. "But all that ended on April 17, 1975 when the Khmer Rouge came in."
   She described the mass evacuation from Cambodia’s capital to the countryside as a very scary time and for the next three years, eight months and 21 days, despite her family’s best efforts to avoid capture, she ended up working in a labor camp training to become a child soldier.
   "We would move from village to village and were in hiding, but always knew the soldiers would come after my family and my father, since he was a politician," she said.
   During the Khmer Rouge’s reign, 2 million Cambodians were killed out of a population of 7 million. Twenty thousand mass graves, containing more than 1 million skulls, have been found, Ms. Ung said.
   Ms. Ung came to the United States, specifically Vermont, with the help of the Holy Family Church in 1980, after escaping to Thailand by boat with one of her brothers. She feels privileged to have been able to grow up in the United States, but did have trouble adjusting and even tried to kill herself at one point.
   "I had a lot of hatred and when I came to America I had a lot of issues and scars to deal with, but what has helped me most was the compassion of my community, the friends I had and activism," she said.
   Today Ms. Ung is working hard for the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation’s Land-mine campaign, traveling around the nation and world promoting awareness of the huge problem land mines across the globe pose for nations trying to live in peace.
   "In Cambodia, there are 40,000 amputees," she said. "About 50 to 100 people are maimed, injured or killed by land mines each month in Cambodia, but it’s not just a Cambodian problem. Twenty-six thousand people are maimed or killed every year worldwide."
   Since 1995, Ms. Ung has gone back to Cambodia 18 times to visit her brother, sister and other relatives. She and two brothers live in the United States.
   Ms. Ung expects to have a second book, chronicling her time growing up in the United States paralleled with the experience of her sister growing up in Cambodia, out in about a year.