First They Killed My Father by Loung Ung

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In her book First they killed my father, Loung Ung narrates the ordeal she and her family suffered during the Khmer Rouge revolutionary years of 1975-1979, where as she narrates, between 1.5 million to 2 million people died from starvation, diseases, execution and through forced labor. Loung Lou narrates her story, in the eyes of a five year old, which is one day playing hopscotch and the next they are running away as they are forcefully evacuated from their homes in Phnom Pen. The family moves from one village to the other and no sooner do they settle, than they have to move again.

Loung was only five years old when it all started. She was the daughter of middle class parents, a Chinese mother and a half Chinese-half-Cambodian father, being the sixth of the seven children. The book is a heart wrenching story showing the long time effects of war, the cruelty inflicted on innocent people who include children for reasons that they had different political believes. The book is a source of strength as one reads how families can stick together and how a person can retain dignity even after going through tough experiences.

Cambodia had been a French colony until 1953 when the country gained its independence under Prince Sihanouk. According to Loung Ung in her book and as narrated to her by her father, Cambodia was peaceful and self-sufficient. However, as Loung Ung continues to narrate, there were people who were not happy with the government under Prince Sihanouk claiming that it was corrupt. Factions were formed to demand for reforms. Among the various factions was the Khmer Rouge, which launched an armed struggle against the Cambodian government.

The government was overthrown in 1970 and Prince Sihanouks Defense Minster, Lol Nol, became the Head of State. In her narrations by her father, the Lol Nol was weak and was easy target by the Khmer Rouge communist faction. The Vietnam war makes it easier for the Khmer Rouge, when the United States attack the Cambodian border with Vietnam as they try to destroy the Vietnamese bases at the North. A lot of Cambodians were killed by the bombings and the Khmer Rouge earned support from the peasants there.

According Loung Ung in her book, the children had been playing outside their houses in the city, just like they had done every day when soldiers in their trucks visit the town of Phnom Penh. The presence of the soldiers in the city led to evacuations of all city residents. Loungs family, just like all other families leave in a rush.

Loungs father having worked with the Lol Nol government as a military police realized that he and his family would be in more serious danger. The Khmer Rouge regime was killing senior government officials. Again, the Khmer Rouge had a dislike for the city people and had only value those with the farming and agricultural skills. The Khmer Rouge and the Pol Pot regime did not believe in the western civilization. The regime planned a cleansing process by banning all electronic items like clocks, television sets, and even watches. The cleansing included evicting people from the cities.

As Loungs family fled, the father had had to lie that he had been a peasant so as to be spared from being attacked. Loung Ung narrates and compares the enforced move from their home, to the black ants she and her sister had frequently played with, how the people from the city had been lined up as they fled from the city, with armed soldiers standing by. After trekking and walking for eight days and with minimal food the family had at first moved to her uncles village, Krang Truope.

Their uncle was highly regarded by the Khmer Rouge as he was one of the base people. The base people were highly regarded and considered by the Khmer Rouge as uncorrupted. These were people who had never moved to the city and had spent their lives in the village. The city people were regarded as useless. At her uncles house her brothers and her father had worked at the farm. They had gotten used to the routine of this village life when again they were forced to move.

The family had to move from this village when they thought that they had spotted someone that they had recognized. They were afraid that this person would have recognized who Loungs father had been, that they were not peasants as they had claimed. The uncle arranged for an evacuation late at night and the family settled at the next village, Ro Leap. They had stayed in this village for a while, working in enslaving situations, with very little food. The older members of the family worked in the rice fields and had also left to the mountains to such for food. Loung and Chou were being left to take care of their younger sister.

They had starved and the family had had to stay for days without food. Her youngest sister Geak has as a result suffered from malnutrition and Loung at times would steal (Ung, 50). In the villages they were overworked on daily basis, with no days to rest and food was rationed. They had worked for long hours with minimal food. When someone got sick, the supervisors would not believe it until this had been confirmed at the infirmary. One of Loungs sisters, Keav, had fallen sick at this time. He was taken to the infirmary and by the time the family visited her the following morning, she had already died at fifteen years.

It was at this village that Loung father was killed through what they though was an execution. He had successfully avoided being recognized as a former government supporter. Approximately one year after the family had settled at Ro Leap, Loungs father had been called by two men who had said that they needed him to assist them with pushing a cart. The two men had told the family that he would be back the following day. He never went back and the family believed that the Khmer Rouge people had finally recognized who he had been and had executed him (Ung, 93). Loungs mother had refused to accept that he had been killed as there was no body and no evidence that he had died. Loung on the other hand had decided to accept his death as she says, To hope is to let pieces of myself die. To hope is to grieve his absence and acknowledge the emptiness in my soul without him.

The death of their father led to the events that caused the family to be separated. After acknowledging her husbands possible death, Loungs mother had guessed that those who had taken the father away might go back to avoid a revolution by their families. She forced the children to separate and told them to go to any orphanage that would take them in.

Loung went along with her sister Chou to an orphanage where they had been forced to do menial work with food being rationed for them. They were starved of food. Loung narrates how angry she had been at the time and the supervisor at the orphanage saw this anger and for this and for this she was recruited into a military training camp. The hatred and anger inside Loung was capitalized on at the military camp. At the camp the children were brainwashed to hate everyone who did not agree with the government way of doing things.

Loungs deep anger and hatred had begun with the death of their father. She narrates how she had told her sister Chou that he was going to look for Pol Pot, the leader of Khmer Rouge and she would kill him, a slow and painful death, she had said. The dreams and nightmares began as almost every night she dreamt that her father was visiting her. She has tried to forget the memories of what she witnessed. And as she says it is too late because the events have already happened. She narrates how she grew up afraid and paranoid, with hatred and with a desire to hurt people. Loung says that she had hated everyone and even after meeting nice people in Vermont; this did not change her attitude towards people.

When Vietnamese had invaded Cambodia in 1979 and by this time Loung was living in an internally displaced peoples camp that was set by the Vietnamese. At this camp, Loung is reunited with the surviving brothers and sisters. It was here that she witnessed her first public execution at nine years. She later started getting nightmares as she imagined the possibility that her father had died in this manner. When Loung had found out about her mothers and younger sisters death, she had suffered from amnesia. She had remained unconscious for three days where she had woken up to find herself at the camp.

After arriving in Vermont first she had not wanted to face the truth and had wanted always wished that she would suffer from amnesia. She longed and wanted to be like the normal American girl, until she is 15 years old. She tried to adapt to the American-girl look by playing football. At night she had nightmares as she suppressed the memories of what had happened and her experienced at Cambodia (Ung, 34). Loung confesses that she had stopped communication with her dear sister back in Thailand as a way to forget her past.

After several and failed attempts to block these memories, they came flooding in when she was 15 years old. She suffered a depression. She had had no one to talk to and not even a psychiatrist would get through to her. It was until her teacher had advised her to put her emotions in writing after she had scored an A+ in a class assignment.

She embarked into serious emotional relieving writing. She wrote her memories in journals and diaries. It was these journal and diary writings that had formed the first draft of the book. Loung said that she wrote to fight the last battle and to express her believe that people can live even in the most extreme of situations. Loung said that though she has severally narrated how her father died it still has not erased the memory of the event. Loung says that writing the book was a way to show the Khmer Rouge that though they caused the death of four members of her family, they did not take away her mind.

One year into the orphanage, Loungs mother and younger sister were taken by the Khmer Rouge and had been killed. Realizing she had lost both her parents made her even angrier. At the military camp she was being taught and trained on how to use weapons and how to be a responsible future citizen by hating anything to do with the government.

The orphanage was bombed by the Vietnamese and she got a chance to escape. She and her brother got into a boat that was ferrying people through Vietnam then to Thailand. After arriving at the refugee camp a picture was taken. The pictures were used in refugee settlement camps for sponsorship. This was the only childhood picture Loung had for the fifteen years before she had gone back to Cambodia. She and her brother were sponsored by a Holy Family Church group and thats how they ended up in Vermont (Ung, p. 216). They had lived together until Loung had moved to D.C. as Meng and his wife stayed back in Vermont.

Loung and her family were of Chinese origin with Cambodian blood as well. As such they had a lighter skin than everyone else at the camps. This had led them to be more discriminated against and other children had made fun of her at the village and even at the orphanage. She narrates how she had tried to darken her skin to stop the discrimination. Loungs mother had also been disliked by other women since she had no experience in the farm work and therefore was not as hard working as the other women.

The Ung family had always had a strong bond. At Phnom Penh, they had always been a close knit family as they all watched television at the living room. As they fled the family had no one else to talk to as they moved from one village to the other. They had had to hide their identity and the children were not supposed to make friends since no one could be trusted.

The family bond continued as Loung stayed with her eldest brother Meng and sister in law in Vermont until she left to live in D.C. This explains how they valued the family. The family had stayed together all along the journey from Phnom Penh to the village where they settled and anytime they were to move, they always had stuck together. The separation of the family was only forced on them as a way of survival. Their mother sent them off, threatening that she no longer needed them. This was however a courageous act on her part because had the family stayed together they would have all been killed, if we stay together, we will die together, she had reasoned. After the war was over Loung went back to Cambodia and with the help of her brother Khouy, they revisit their home.

This brother contributed with a 100 pages of the family history. Loung has called the book a family project. She has also indicated that one of the reasons why she wrote the book was for her nieces in the U.S. who had no idea of their family history. This shows that though the war had physically separated some members of the family from each other, the bond had still remained strong. Loung and her sister Chou were reunited 15 years later when Loung visited Cambodia for the first time since she had left for Vermont when she had been only 10 years old.

At the refugee camps Loung and her family were provided with shelter and food. On arrival they had been suffering from malnutrition and there were doctors to treat them for this and any other sickness. They were not forced work and she therefore considered the camps to be a better place than the orphanage and the villages that they had been to. At the refugee camps she had been reunited with her siblings. Her brother had chosen to move America and had chosen to take Loung with him as well as his wife. The brother was only allowed to travel with one child and Loung had been chosen, as she was the younger one, and also for courage, a dangerous character in Cambodia but acceptable in the U.S.A.

Loung Ung presently works with the Campaign for a Landmine-Free World. She says that working at this organization has been a way to liberate her self from the pain and anger she had experienced. The more I tell people the less the nightmares haunt me. The more people listen to me, the less I hate, she has said (Ung, p. 159).

The book is a sad story. It is a real life experience of someone who went through the devastating effects of war. A child being evicted from her comfortable home is forced to trek for days. No sooner than she settles into a new life than another devastating even occurs, one as devastating as the previous one. Reading this book has put a human face into the news and into what we read and hear from the international news channels.

These are real people who go through these experiences, through no fault of their own. Reading the book evokes feelings of anger at the leaders who cause and to those who inflict such inhumane pain to fellow human beings. The book also sensitizes the reader on the importance of empathizing with those who may have gone through such experiences. One should help as much as possible by donating to the organizations that help the refugees as without such help Loung Ung would not have had the chance to let the world know. Finally the book is a source of hope that human can live through very tough situations and with inner strength they can survive and live positive lives

Works Cited

Ung, Loung. First they Killed my Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers. New York: Harper Perennial. 2001. Print

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First They Killed My Father by Loung Ung

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