Through the Dark Jungle: One Family's Escape from Cambodia's Genocide

Survivors aren't always the strongest; sometimes they're the smartest, but more often simply the luckiest. (Ryan, n.d.)Within hours, the soldiers would gun them down. The family had received word that they had made the "kill list." With no time to waste, the father decided that the family needed to leave. The father, mother and eight children left everything behind, except some gold and jewelry to bribe guards and barter for food. Under the cover of darkness, the family fled and moved from city to city, camp to camp. When sleeping, the females snuggled between the men, afraid they would be raped by outsiders. The family traversed the jungles and mountainsides of Cambodia, navigated landmines and enemy soldiers, and slipped into Thailand. After residing in a refugee camp, they relocated to the United States to start a new life. Many others they knew were imprisoned, tortured, or killed. "We were lucky to be alive," said HuYin Li, the oldest sister, who labored twelve hours a day building a dam before escaping and reuniting with her family. While the Li's story may read like a Hollywood movie script, it is very real. It is the story of a family surviving and clinging together under horrible circumstances. My purpose in researching and telling this story was to record and publish the participants' recollection of the events involving their survival and escape during the Cambodian genocide. As an emerging oral historian, I wanted to fill in the historical record by collecting first-hand experiences, and thus, preserve their stories and "leave a complete, candid, and reliable record as possible" (Ritchie, 2014, p. 8). In addition, the research would ideally contribute meaningful insights to the extant literature on the Cambodian Genocide, particularly the kind of work that provides a voice to survivors (DePaul, 1997) by sharing their perspectives, and in the process, teach us more about how they survived despite the death and destruction that surrounded them.Historical ContextA guerrilla group driven by communist ideals, the Khmer Rouge surfaced in Cambodia's northeastern jungles as early as the 1960s (Fletcher, 2009). In April 1975, the Communist Khmer Rouge, led by Pol Pot, overthrew the existing Lon Nol government. They renamed the country "Democratic Kampuchea" and after ending five years of foreign interventions, civil war, and bombardment, thousands of Phnom Penh residents celebrated in the streets (Knaub, 2014). Preparing for a radical shift to an agrarian society, the Khmer Rouge evacuated the entire population of the city-more than 2.5 million people-to camps in the countryside (Fletcher, 2009). Former doctors, teachers, and others professionals were stripped of possessions and forced to labor in fields as part of the reeducation process; those who complained or opposed the new rule were tortured in detention centers (History.com, 2009). Under Pol Pot's reign, money, private property, most reading materials and religion were outlawed; children were taken from their homes and forced into the military or work camps (History.com, 2009). Residents had little to eat, marginal housing and clothing, poor sanitation and no healthcare or medical services (Knaub, 2014). Most Cambodians were forced to work 12 or more hours a day under inhumane conditions. Hundreds of thousands of Cambodians starved to death in rice fields (History.com, 2009). By the time Vietnamese forces overtook the Khmer Rouge in January 1979, Cambodia had endured a "holocaust of unbelievable magnitude" (Knuab, 2014, p. xxiii) and an estimated (accounts vary) 1 to 2 million people-or about a third of the country's population-were killed (Fletcher, 2009; Panh, 2012).How I Came to Tell This Family's StoryAn acquaintance mentioned his family's escape from Cambodia in passing. He said his family had traveled through the jungle at night and lived in a refugee camp in Thailand before settling in the United States. I became intrigued with the story and wanted to know more. …