As Cambodians fled genocide in their own country nearly 40 years ago, many with nothing to bring but their families, they looked to America to find the much fabled better life with better opportunities.
According to a 2012 Pew Research study, there are over 276,000 Cambodian-Americans, making it the eighth-largest Asian-American ethnic group.
Today, fortunes are mixed for those 276,000 Cambodian-Americans, but almost all of them agree that the genocide has had some impact on their families and communities.
Kovith Kret was 21 years old when the genocide began in 1975, the equivalent of a college sophomore. He lived in the capital, Phnom Penh, at the time. Like many city families, Kret and his family were forcibly evacuated to the countryside on April 17 of that year. All of a sudden, he found himself separated from his family, and was digging irrigation trenches from 4 a.m. to 9 p.m. every day.
“There were no holidays, no personal days, no vacation,” Kret said.
In addition, Kret said that city people and pre-genocide country dwellers were treated differently by the Khmer Rouge. As somebody from the city, he was discriminated against because he was not originally from a “liberated zone.”
Kret also spoke of various “tests” that Khmer Rouge officers would give him to prove that he was not educated. For example, he had to pretend not to know how to read instructions on a medicine bottle, or be tested on how many oranges orange sellers fit in their hand.
He escaped Cambodia in January 1979, after the Vietnamese invaded the country. He said that his dreams before coming to the United States in November 1981 were to pursue higher education, get a job, to be happy, and after living there for a long time, to become an American citizen.
Kret has now been working in Human Services for 28 years. He feels he has found a lot of success since arriving in Massachusetts, where he currently lives.
“There are different angles on how you look at the term ‘success’ itself,“ Kret said. “It can be anything. And to me, I’d say that I have a prosperous life and achieved my dreams.”
In his years as a social worker, Kret has done much for the Cambodian community. He has worked as a service coordinator for the Department of Mental Health since 1988. In his capacity, he makes referrals to developmentally disabled people seeking his department’s services, and deals primarily with people over the age of 22, who are past the age of entitlement to any developmental disability services by the state of Massachusetts. Cambodian families make up 98 percent of his caseload, and he is the only Khmer speaking service coordinator in the department.
While he is set to retire soon, Kret still does voluntary work by hosting “Voice of Cambodian Children,” a radio show on UMass Lowell owned station WUML. The show airs from 2:30 to 3:30 p.m. on 91.5 FM radio, and focuses on promoting Khmer culture and tradition.
Kret was also once involved in a non-governmental organization in Cambodia, through which he helped raise funds for relief causes in HIV/AIDS, education in rural areas, and the building of infrastructure.
He said while he has found success through his educational background and the work he does for his community, the definition of success differs with some other Cambodians, especially poorer ones.
“The success [Cambodians] can see in their community is through sustainability, that the family members are all together. No family breakdown, that’s a success.”
Kret’s sister-in-law, Mailan, also survived the genocide. She was only a teenager at the time, and she has found it difficult at times to leave her past behind. As she talked about her escape, she explained the perils of anyone trying to head for a refugee camp. She said she could have been blown up by landmines, killed by Khmer Rouge soldiers if they caught her at the border, or even by Thai soldiers, who were suspicious of the spread of communism into their country.
For years, she struggled with nightmares and sought professional treatment for PTSD.
“I couldn’t sleep at night, I had nightmares almost every night, and sometimes I couldn’t fall asleep until 2:30 or 3 o’clock,” she said. “I went to work and felt exhausted.”
Her mental health issues were not the only problem she faced when she resettled in the United States. Soon after coming to America in 1981, she attended South Boston High School, as many newly settled Cambodians did, during the time of Boston busing. She was caught in the midst of the racial tensions of the period, but said that when she arrived, she was not aware of the implications of racial politics.
“I thought when they escorted us to get into the bus, I went, ‘Wow, in this country, the students are really really important.’ We got escorted all the time,” she said, trying to control her laughter.
“In my country, we’re only scared about the different political parties, but we’re not really worried about racial discrimination.”
Mailan remembers a particular moment when her bus was stoned, and a rock went through her window. She said that many of the shards of glass barely missed her, but some of it went into the right side of her face.
“That’s the history of South Boston, and later on I learned, ‘Oh my goodness, I was a genocide survivor, a refugee, came to this country, and now I’ve gotten into another conflict.’ I survived again.”
However, Mailan feels she has turned her life around since then. She now works as a budget analyst for Head Start, a federal program under the Action for Boston Community Development (ABCD). In her job at Head Start, she helps analyze the financial necessities to fund preschools in low income areas, and does sometimes serve the Cambodian community. Unlike Kovith, she does not know what the definition of the American Dream is, but laid out her own hopes she had in her new country.
“I wanted to get a good education, which I was just lucky enough to fulfill that dream here,” Mailan said. “I wanted to get a good job. That doesn’t mean pay...but to be able to work in a place where I feel fulfillment, to feel like I make a difference in people’s lives.”
She said that her job at Head Start allows her to be appreciated, and that she does feel like she is making a difference for her community.
Mailan also finds a lot of pride in America, as a place that allowed her to fulfill her life’s goals.
“You see that?” she said, pointing to the American flag hanging off of her house. “It’s not meant just to fly. My husband and I believe in that in our hearts.”
Audrea Chea, who was only eight years old when the genocide ended, has similar memories, and also struggled for a long time with mental health issues. Her mother, as well as her youngest brother, both died during the genocide.
Chea recalled her escape, where she narrowly missed being blown up by mines planted on the national highway. She remembered that she saw piles of corpses lying on the side of the road, and how she thought they were sleeping, even as the bodies attracted flies and emitted a smell.
She said that once she left Cambodia, she experienced many culture shocks for things considered common by Americans, such as how to use sinks or modern toilets.
Life in America also triggered painful memories, though. Chea recalled one prank by some students in middle school, where they threw firecrackers to scare people.
“I thought it was gunshots, and I started running for somewhere to hide,” Chea said. “I started to have flashbacks. They didn’t know my story.”
Chea reached her lowest point in 2000, as a graduate student at the Boston University School of Social Work. She went into depression after finishing a report about the relationship between HIV/AIDS and mental health issues among Cambodians. She said that interviewing the participants in the study reminded her of her own situation.
“I felt helpless, hopeless, and hurt that I couldn’t help those people,” she said. “I sat in my bed and did not want to live.”
She said she felt depressed for about six months, and stopped going to school and work in that time. Eventually, though, she felt the need to push herself again.
“I told myself, ‘I paid too much money to go to school. I have to live. I have to get up.’”
After she came back and finished at BU in 2002, Chea worked several different jobs related to the Cambodian community, such as working in mental health institutions or writing for Cambodian-American newspapers. Today, she works for the Massachusetts Rehabilitation Commission, specifically coordinating cases where the victim has sustained head trauma from external forces such as sports injuries or car crashes.
Chea’s family remains important to her. While she said that a photograph of her mother would be unrecognizable to her, her mother is still recognizable to her in her heart.
Fearing it would hurt her father, she says she never asked him about his experience, and that he never spoke of it either.
“I think it upsets him to talk about it because he feels hopeless and helpless,” Chea said. “I think it’s too sad to ask my father, so I avoid knowing the truth for now.”
Meanwhile, she has a family of her own, which she calls her “full time job at home.” She said that she involves her two children in the Cambodian community by getting them to do activities go to the temple, to attend cultural celebrations, to watch the Angkor Dance Troupe. According to her, her children also speak a little bit of Khmer.
“Despite all the experience I’ve gone through as a child and a teenager, I have overcome all my obstacles. I have reached the rainbow color in my life,” Chea said.
Jane Nov was born in North Carolina, four years after the genocide ended. Both of her parents were born in Cambodia, and survived the genocide. While family life is important to them, Nov said, her parents do not talk about the genocide much.
“That time period, they don’t go back to now, it’s in the past,” she said. According to her, her parents are willing to talk to her about the genocide, but she does not usually ask them questions about it or bring it up casually.
Despite not growing up in Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge period, Nov has come to appreciate her Cambodian heritage more. Living in Massachusetts today, she said there are more opportunities there than in North Carolina to go to cultural events, such as traditional dances or going to temple. She said that her parents also keep up with community events. She believes that a lot of her appreciation came after working with Cambodians in mental health for three years, even though she has moved on to other work.
Vannak Suos escaped Cambodia in 1979 with his mother--while he was in her womb. He was born in Thailand’s Khao-I-Dang refugee camp in 1980. Suos and his mother came to California when he was only five months old, and he does not know who his biological father is. Having lived nearly his entire life in America, he considers himself American.
Like Nov, Suos has not asked his mother many questions about the genocide, but is starting to do so more often now.
Despite not living through most of the genocide, Suos has still had highs and lows in his path to success. Living his early life in Santa Ana, Los Angeles and Bakersfield, he was frequently around gangs, including Cambodian ones.
“I would ditch school and go hang out with them,” he said.
However, he said that just because his circle of friends was a gang, it did not make them bad people.
“We were family, protecting each other.”
Suos said he experienced lots of racial problems. He recalled incidents from his Bakersfield high school where a Hispanic gang tried provoking him when they found out he was a gang member. He also remembered an incident where white and Hispanic gangs formed a human wall to stop the Cambodians and blacks. The situation became severe enough that he had to leave the school.
In 2003, Suos was shot by another Cambodian gang while leaving a nightclub in Long Beach. When asked why other Cambodians attacked him, Suos said that their mentality was, “If you don’t know them, those are your enemies.”
The incident caused him to start carrying a gun, leading to a turning point in his life. In 2007, he was caught, and convicted for illegal possession of a firearm. He was sentenced to 16 months in jail, but only served eight months because of good behavior.
However, because he had committed a crime and was not a U.S. citizen (as he was born in Thailand and subject to the same immigration laws his mother was), he had to fight deportation. He said that he argued his case noting he had a big influence in his community, promising to change, as well as needing to be a father to his two daughters.
He was held in Arizona for an additional three months by the Immigration and Naturalization Service during his deportation case, and eventually won it.
Suos said that the ordeal opened his eyes to the prison life and caused him to want to turn his life around.
After getting off parole a year after he was released from prison, Suos worked several jobs for cable companies, and is now a retail supervisor working for a phone company. He currently lives in Massachusetts, and said that there are more opportunities, less discrimination by gangs and police, and less drama there than in California.
He said that he is heading in the right direction, and has repaired his once rocky relationship with his mother.
Both family and community hold value for Suos, especially his mother.
“No matter how bad I am, she’ll still take care of me,” he said.
He still spends time with his former gang members, who have also left behind the violence. Suos likes to see them as another form of family, a group of people coming together while living their lives.
“There’s more to life than being a gang member,” Suos said. “We’re a different kind of gang, a more positive kind.”
A study on the White House’s official website says that Cambodian-Americans have a poverty rate of 29.3 percent, about 17 percent above the national average, and second-highest among Asian-American groups. Another statistic from the Voa Cambodia magazine states that Cambodian-Americans have twice the rate of type 2 diabetes of the American average, as well as seven times the rate of depression, and 15 times the rate of PTSD.
Nov, Suos, Chea, and the Krets all offered their own explanation as to why they think the statistics are what they are.
Kovith Kret said that the main key to the statistics lie within the genocide. Because many men were executed during the genocide, including his father, a substantial number of women were left as widows. Cambodian families tend to be organized in traditional gender roles, and Kret believes that each role is equally important.
The gender roles meant that women often had no education, and therefore could not impart any onto their children. Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot also shut down most education during the genocide, which contributed to the lack of education. Kovith’s generation, as well as his parents’ generation, also struggle with language barriers which hinder their job opportunities. Finally, he said that the mental health effects of the genocide have taken their toll on the Cambodian population in America, and still do to this day.
Mailan agreed, saying that many Cambodian-Americans still face language and financial barriers.
“When you don’t have the opportunity to go and get an education in this country, it’s really difficult to get ahead in your life,” she said.
She also added that one time when conducting research for the CDC, she found that many of the patients she interviewed did have mental health problems.
Chea, who was one of the few Cambodians in her generation to get a master’s degree, concurred. She said that while she was lucky to have a father that valued education and sought to educate her, not every Cambodian family has access to educated parents. As a result, children are not encouraged to get one, leading to a cycle of low income and poverty for Cambodians, some of whom feel hopeless of escaping. She also mentioned the Khmer Rouge’s role in shutting down education following their takeover of Cambodia in 1975.
Suos said that because of PTSD, other mental health issues, and a language and culture barrier, many Cambodians felt completely lost when coming to America. As a result, their children had no guidance, especially with education, which Suos said could lead Cambodians to joining gangs with their older cousins. He said that his mother is still afraid to leave the house at night, though she is getting better at it. He also believes that the California government is doing a better job at uniting Cambodians and other races than they did when he grew up.
Nov believes that between the older and younger generations, there is a difference in their outlooks on life, especially due to cultural differences between America and Cambodia. She said that for the younger generation, many of them are unmarried, do not yet have any children, and have gone to school and gotten an education, all of which are different trends from previous Cambodian generations.
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