An Unforgettable Account of the Pol Pot Regime During the Khmer Rouge Years (2000)

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• published: 10 Mar 2015
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Loung Ung (born 1970) is a Cambodian-born American human-rights activist and lecturer. She is the national spokesperson for the Campaign for a Landmine-Free World. Between 1997 and 2003 she served in the same capacity for the "International Campaign to Ban Landmines", which is affiliated with the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation. Ung was born in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, the sixth of seven children and the third of four girls, to Seng Im Ung and Ay Choung Ung. Her actual birthdate is unknown; the Khmer Rouge destroyed many of the birth records of the inhabitants of cities in Cambodia. At ten years of age, she escaped from Cambodia as a survivor of what became known as "the Killing Fields" during the reign of Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge regime. After emigrating to the United States and adjusting to her new country, she wrote two books which related her life experiences from 1975 through 2003. Today, Ung is married and lives with her husband in Shaker Heights, a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio. Ung's first memoir, First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers, details her experiences in Cambodia from 1975 until 1980: "From 1975 to 1979—through execution, starvation, disease, and forced labor—the Khmer Rouge systematically killed an estimated two million Cambodians, almost a fourth of the country's population. This is a story of survival: my own and my family's. Though these events constitute my own experience, my story mirrors that of millions of Cambodians. If you had been living in Cambodia during this period, this would be your story too." [1] Published in the United States in 2000 by HarperCollins, it became a national bestseller, and in 2001 it won the award for "Excellence in Adult Non-fiction Literature" from the Asian/Pacific American Librarians Association. First They Killed My Father has subsequently been published in twelve countries in nine languages. Her second memoir, Lucky Child: A Daughter of Cambodia Reunites with the Sister She Left Behind, chronicles her adjustment to life in the U.S. with and without her family, and the experiences of her surviving family members in Cambodia during the ensuing warfare between Vietnamese troops and the Khmer Rouge. It covers the period of 1980 until 2003, and HarperCollins published it in 2005. In both of her memoirs, Ung wrote in the first person and, for the most part, in the present tense, describing the events and circumstances as if they were unfolding before the reader's eyes: "I wanted [the readers] to be there". Ung's father was born in the small village of Tro Nuon in Kampong Cham province in 1931.[3] Her mother was from China and moved with her family to Cambodia when she was a little girl. They married against her family's wishes, and eventually came to live with their children in a third-floor apartment in the center of the bustling capital city of Phnom Penh. Due to his record of service in the previous government of Prince Norodom Sihanouk, Ung's father was conscripted into the government of Lon Nol, and became a high-ranking military police officer. Ung's mother supported her family as a homemaker. The family was relatively well-off and owned two cars and a truck, and their house used running water, a flushable toilet, and an iron bathtub. They also had telephones as well as the daily services of a maid, and often enjoyed films at the nearby theater and swimming in the pool at a local club. By her own account, Loung lived a happy and carefree life in a close-knit loving family, until April 17, 1975, when the Khmer Rouge gained control of Cambodia and evacuated Phnom Penh. Loung was playing near her home when trucks filled with Khmer Rouge troops rolled into her neighborhood. The populace of Phnom Penh, estimated at nearly two million people, was forced to evacuate. The Ungs abruptly left their home with what few belongings they could stow in their truck. When the truck ran out of fuel, they gathered the bare essentials that they could carry and began what became a seven-day trek toward Bat Deng in a throng of evacuees, harried by the bullhorns of the soldiers. Along the way, they stopped at night to sleep in the fields and to search for food. Seng Im Ung, posing as the father of a peasant family, was fortunate to get by a military checkpoint in Kom Baul without being detained; many evacuees who were perceived to be a threat to the new government, because of their previous education or political position, were summarily executed there.[4] On the seventh day, as the Ungs neared Bat Deng, Loung's uncle found them and arranged to bring them by wagon to his village of Krang Truop. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loung_Ung