WDS Interview with Loung Ung
January 23, 2001

     Sean Singer

Loung Ung's "First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers" (Harper Collins), is the story of a little girl who enters hell. Her innocence with her upper middle class family in 1975 was uprooted when the Khmer Rouge took violent control over Cambodia.

The second youngest of eight children, Ms. Ung and her family were forced to leave their possessions and home in Phnom Penh and relocate to the remote countryside where the worked 14 hour days digging ditches and working in what became known as the killing fields.

Her parents were horrifically executed and two sisters died of starvation and disease. She had just turned eight. I recently spoke to Ms. Ung about her book.

Sean Singer: Do you feel your work for peace has redeemed the violence you experienced?

Loung Ung: It's helped a little. It's made a little bit of the guilt go away. That's a difficult question. It's certainly made it easier for me to live a joyful life and to live a life with a little less guilt. If I had a choice, I wouldn't have chosen to live this life. I had to.

SS: Were there any acts of bravery or compassion against the Khmer Rouge, the way gentiles took Jews in during World War II?

I think there are always acts of bravery and courageous acts during the war and that's why we have over 5 million survivors. I'm always asked, why didn't you bear arms or fight? It's difficult when you have to watch your sister die of starvation or your brother endure torture just to bring his family a little food. We fought by surviving. We fought by refusing to give up our humanity. I think we're all survivors. My father's compassion for us, and my brother's heroic acts. Those are the acts that you saw everyone.

SS: Several times in First They Killed My Father, you want to kill the murderers of your family. How do you feel about the potential for violence and hate within yourself? Is it possible that anyone has the potential to become evil?

There was definitely potential. I was very angry to lose both my parents in that way. I wanted to kill the Khmer Rouge. Thankfully for me I was pulled out of that at an early age. Those acts of kindness more than anything else have quelled that hatred in me. Sometimes I see people talking and people look at me a certain way so I have to be on the defensive. I have to consciously think to myself that people are out there to hurt me.

For children and for people growing up in that decade, it's hard not to be converted [into a killer] especially if that's the only message you get.

SS: Have you met victims of other genocides: the Holocaust, Rwanda, El Salvador, etc., and are your experiences similar?

I've met Holocaust survivors, people from Bosnia. Our experiences are similar in the same feelings of distrust, the same sadness, when is this healing going to stop? You get to a place to feel good and OK and say it's really over…

Then something will trigger and that vast sadness will make you want to curl into a fetal position and cry and scram forever. Will this go on the rest of my life? Will I suffer this sadness every year, every two years, will this be with me?

Each time you get over it and force yourself to enjoy the good times. I think those emotional parts seem similar from the people I talk to other Cambodian survivors and when we survivors get together we tend to talk less about the horrors that we suffered and more about the joy in our lives.

SS: Is it possible to have some solace in believing in a hell-- that Pol Pot and his soldiers will receive punishment after death?

I was told that PP died from a lot of illnesses and he was living in the jungle. The vindictive part of me really rejoiced at that. I certainly wished him ill. The more painful death for him I can imagine the better I feel. As far as whether or not he'll suffer in the after life is not good enough for me.

SS: One of the most interesting scenes in your memoir is when you secretly see Met Bong and her male counterpart being romantic in the woods. How does a child who perceives emotions being perverted and subverted learn to forgive and build normal relationships?

I think for me it's been because my parents loved me. I had been more blessed than most. My father was absolutely in love with me. I didn't realize my mother's love for me was strong until an adult.

That was the salvation of my humanity. They gave me strength to go on. The Khmer Rouge couldn't be right if the world could create people like my parents. I couldn't be all that bad if people like my parents really love me.

SS: Do you ever feel guilty about surviving?

I feel guilty about surviving things. You always wonder why you were kept alive when other seemingly better people died. There is always pressure to be more, to be better, to be perfect. Why were you kept alive in the first place. That's really difficult.

First of all I was kept alive, and had so much more than my siblings in Cambodia. What's helped me to live a life and bring it down to perspective is to try to do something with it.

SS: How do children who were born in Cambodia after the Khmer Rouge regime learn about it?

They don't learn a lot from it. Children might know about the Khmer Rouge. They might know who died. They don't know what it feels like to live in hell. I read a couple of months ago about a school in Cambodia that was cutting the Khmer Rouge history out of the curriculum. Parents don't want to talk about it.

Given a choice to remember it or not, you would not want to. You want to choose not, but I don't have that choice.

SS: Genocide like the one that occurred in Cambodia seem to repeat themselves. Do you think there are ways to prevent these horrors?

It certainly does keep happening. It Bosnia, Rwanda, etc. The best way to keep it from happening is to know what war is about, etc. Living in America is an interesting place. There's a big Pentagon here in Washington. They don't know. They see the beginning and the end of war, but they don't consider its victims. Archibald MacLeish said were diluted every day and at risk of losing our ability to heal. All hell is going to break lose

To connect people with stories in the world is a way to prevent this from happing. If only people understand that we're all human beings. We basically all want the same thing. All I wanted during the war was my mom and dad to be with me and to grow up and be safe. I still want that 20 years later.