The book, First They Killed My Father was written by the Loung Ungs. Ungs was a survivor of the killing which took place in Khmer Rouge Killing Fields. At the time she was writing the book, she was an adult but was looking back at her life when she was between the age of five and nine years old. The story begins with the author’s pleasant life in Phnom Penh city of Cambodia. The author was a young girl from a middle-class family. The author’s father was working in the government of the Cambodia; therefore, the author’s family was living a good life. That is, there were plenty of food stuff, expensive clothes as well as quality schooling for the children. When Khmer Rouge took over the country on mid-April 1975 all the good life the author’s …show more content…
family enjoyed disappeared. Ungs together with other families were forced to leave because of the fear that they may be killed. “The next morning ma comes to wake me but I am already up. Chuo and Kim are dressed and ready to go” (p122). Ung’s family had to grab what they could and leave the city her uncle’s home that was living in a village called Krang Truop.
“It is no longer safe for us to stay here”. (p44) This village was also run by Khmer Rouge and this made Ungs’ family move to another village where they also faced challenges. In November 1975 her family settled in the labor camp in Ro Leap village and spent eighteen months. Ungs joined a girls’ camp. While in there she had a dream that her mother is in trouble. She immediately returned to Ro Leap village and was informed that her mother and her sister had been killed. As a result, she lost her consciousness for three days. Rage heats up my body, seeing only one of them killed is not enough!” (p205). When she returned to the camp the leader punished her. Khmer Rouge attacked the camp and claimed that it was the Vietnamese and therefore the girls were forced to leave. Ungs found herself in an infirmary where she coincidentally met her family members. After reuniting with the family they decided to get away from Khmer Rouge. Ungs together with her elder brother moved to America and got a sponsorship from an American family which got them out of the refugee camp in Thailand. Ungs then returned to Cambodia after many years to reunite with her family …show more content…
members. This book by the title First They Killed My Father is describing a route that started in the city called Phnom Penh and moved to Ro Leap.
The survivors of the war escaped to Vietnam and to Thailand. The author of the book is telling the story in a straightforward and descriptive manner. When telling the story she did not have any difficult times in revealing her importance. This allows the story to create its own impact on the readers. Ungs did not tell in the story the reason as to why the leaders in Khmer Rouge who took over power after war were involved in the process of forging a cruelty regime. But the author did tell her best. “After each round of rifle fire, people push and shove one another in a panicked frenzy trying to evacuate the
city”(p22). The author shows the way she experienced losses in the process of war. When her father, mother, and sister were each taken from her one by one. The author refuses to let go of her family members. “My mind obsesses over the pictures my mind makes up of their death, which refuse to let go of me” (p163). Instead, she put her concentration on describing the survivors’ grim tasks, like the task of finding food while in the starving countries. Ungs said that when her mother decided to buy a sick child a black market chicken she was punished. “…stood before her parents in front of their hut, hair disheveled, face swollen, shoulders slumped, arms hanging like dead weights. She could not meet the gaze of her parents”(p71). She also remembered a man who was very poor that he killed a stray dog and ate it. “I want more, I want to eat until I was full and worry about the punishment later”(p90). In this book, the author did not provide a horror overall history that was inflicted by Khmer Rouge. The wider part of this horror seems to change the image of the society. One day the history about the nature of that effort will be written and how societies are linked. This book by this intelligent and morally aware young woman is telling the readers all about what it was like when struggling to survive while others on the other side were playing out their Utopian dreams.
During the 1960s and 70s, Laos became engulfed in the Vietnam War. The U.S. government also got involved by supporting the anti-Communist forces and getting the tribes in Laos to help them. The Iu Mein, as well as other minority tribes, provided the U.S. with armed manpower, intelligence, and surveillance. In 1975, the community forces rose in victory as the Iu Mein people began to escape to their homeland. My father said that the reason my family, as well as most of the Iu Mein in Laos, ran away was because they didn't want to be under the new Pathet Lao government. Escaping was not easy to accomplish. Many of my parents' friends who were caught trying to escape were taken to prisons, tortured, and most of them were killed. My parents were terrified of the Vietnamese soldiers and prayed that nothing would happen to them, their brothers, sisters, parents, and their son (my brother) who was 8 years old at the time. They had to flee during the night, pass through the jungles and onto boats traveling across the Mekong River.
	The novel illuminates light on the situation not just during the Vietnam era, but also rather throughout all history and the future to come. Throughout mankind’s occupation of earth, we have been plagued by war and the sufferings caused by it. Nearly every generation of people to walk this earth have experienced a great war once in their lifetimes. For instance, Vietnam for my father’s generation, World War 2 for my grandfather’s, and World War 1 for my great-grandfather’s. War has become an unavoidable factor of life. Looking through history and toward the future, I grow concerned over the war that will plague my generation, for it might be the last war.
The narrator, Le Ly Hayslip was born into a family of six in a town called Ka Ly in Vietnam. The villagers of Ka Ly fight for both side of the war; Hayslip’s own brothers were split between the communist north and the puppet government controlled south and so were her family. By day the village was looked over by Republicans, but by night they were under...
In a Khmer Rouge prison camp, Arn finds motivation to survive when he finds his sister, whom he loves and cares for. In 1974, the country that Arn lived in named Cambodia was taken over by a group of communists called the Khmer Rouge. These Khmer Rouge tortured the Cambodians by making them work almost all day and night in rice fields and also starved them by feeding them tiny portions of rice. In result, lots of Cambodians gave up on life because they had no motivation to live and no hope. Arn also went through this torture and was forced to live in these terrible conditions, but describes how he regained his motivation to live when he finds his sister, “Long time ago I kill all hope in myself. And live only like animal, survive one day, then one day more.
Cambodia would become a battle ground for American troops fighting in Vietnam for four years; the war would kill up to 750,000 Cambodians through U.S. efforts to destroy suspected North Vietnamese supply lines. This devastation would take its toll on the Cambodian peoples’ morale and would later help to contribute to the conflicts that caused the Cambodian genocide. In the 1970’s the Khmer Rouge guerrilla movement would form. The leader of the Khmer Rouge, Pol Pot, was educated in France and believed in Maoist Communism. These communist ideas would become important foundations for the ideas of the genocide, and which groups would be persecuted.
by Patricia McCormick there are many similies throughout the book that give more detail and insight into what is happening during the Cambodian Genocide. Arn, a young boy living in Cambodia witnessed many horrible and tragic things throughout the 4 year time period. Arn says, “That pile, now it’s like a mountain” This quote indicates that during the genocide millions of people were brutally murdered and put into mass graves. Arn sees dirt piles and sees them rapidly start to grow which means more and more people are getting killed and put into mass graves. Shortly after Arn describes the growth of the dirt piles as a mountain. Arn’s aunt tells him to, “Be like the grass” Arn’s aunt means that in order to survive you can’t show any emotion. She means to go where ever the wind takes you, Instead of the wind though it’s Khmer Rouge. She is telling Arn to not show any emotion and to do whatever the Khmer Rouge says if you want to have a chance to survive. Arn witnesses the killing of hundrends of innocent people. Arn explains, “Terrible sound, like cracking a coconut, only its a human head.” This quote compares the sound of a coconut being cracked upen to the sound of a human head being hit by an axe. Arn explains that they sound similar. Throughout the entire genocide 3 million people were killed. Arn was one of the lucky ones and listened to what his aunt said and played
Genocide was one of the traits of the Khmer Rouge’s New Kampuchea, this was often seen in the use of prisons or more correctly referred to as “execution facilities.” Tuol Sleng, previously called S-21, was probably the most infamous of Khmer Rouge prisons, here 20,000 prisoners died and only seven were ever know to make it out alive. The largest massacre in Tuol Sleng was on May 27. 1978 and 582 were executed that day. An even gorier occurrence than a typical day at Tuol Sleng was during the January of 1979 when fleeing Khmer officials slit the throats of all remaining prisoners and left them chained to their cots, blood spilling out. At a typical execution in any of the “prisons”,
As stated earlier, Ung’s family and many others of the upper class were forced out of their homes by the Khmer Rouge and into a labor camp. This camp led by the rebellious Khmer Rouge was set up to be a perfect, classless society where everyone is equal. Loung Ung states, “The Angkar says they are model citizens because many have never ventured out of their village and have not been corrupted by the West. We are the new people, those who have migrated from the city.” She also says, “The base people will train us to be hard workers and teach
Loung’s parents along with her six siblings, grabbed what they could and left the city with their truck. Eventually the gas of their truck ran out and they had to walk for seven days to reach the home of their uncle in the village of Krang Troup, which was also run by the Khmer Rouge. Due to the dangers of living in Krang Truop, the family left for another village, but they were not welcome there either. Finally, in November of 1975, the family settled in the labor camp and village called Ro Leap, where they lived for 18 months as the Khmer Rouge slowly starved and killed many Cambodians, including some of Ung’s family
In the book First They Killed My Father, Loung Ung is a five-year-old girl living a prosperous middle class life in Phnom Penh when the Khmer Rouge army charges into the city. They forced all citizens out and persuaded them the reason was the U.S. would be bombing Phnom Penh and killed those who stayed back. They sought to enforce a classless Agrarian society. Unable to return because of the danger, Loung and her family of 9 walked a disturbing amount in the hot sun and uncomfortable conditions. Developing a painful starvation, they attempted to survive the harsh circumstances of the camps they were put in by the Angkar. Throughout the brutal journey of working day to night, receiving little to no food each day, being stripped of multiple identity
Once American troops left Cambodia, the time known as the Khmer Rouge era started for Cambodia. This era contained four years of Pol Pot having control over the terrifying army. As he has control over this army, he leads them into Phnom Penh and starts the mass killing known as The Killing Fields. This area of land which was once a torturing ground and killing fields, is now the biggest tourist attraction in Cambodia. The goal of the Khmer Rouge was not to eliminate the Cambodian race but instead was to teach them to become loyal communists. As with all attempts at implementing communism, it was a total failure.
Anyone who came into contact with western influences did not fall under the acceptable view of returning to” year zero”. This prompted the relocation of her and her family under orders of Angkar. Angkar, also known as Angka, is not one singular person or being; it is an idea similar to religion. Angka is a generalized idea made by Pol Pot, who was the leader of the Khmer Rouge. Every action carried out by the Khmer Rouge was in direct correspondence with the idea of this greater being of supremacy. When Loung Ung’s journey begins, she doesn’t quite understand the idea of ‘Angka’; but by the end of her experience she is all too familiar with the abhorrent nature of the Khmer Rouge. Fairly quickly Loung learns the ways of the Angka. She learns to feel inconceivable hatred from the acts that are carried out under the ruling of Angka. “The Angkar has taught me to hate so deeply that I now know I have the power to destroy and kill (Pg. 105).” Her hatred dims the ever-growing grief inside of her for her family and for those around her. An example of this hatred replacing her grief occurs when she stumbles upon a random dead body. Being that everyone was dressed the same she could not tell whether it was a civilian or a Khmer Rouge soldier. Her feelings of hatred help her on her journey so she decided it ‘must’ be a soldier and is therefore not mourning the death nor is she sorry. "I do not in fact know if the body is a civilian or a soldier. Thinking of the body as a civilian makes me think of Pa too much. It is easier to feel no pity for the dead if I think of them as all Khmer Rouge. I hate them all. Holding on to my hate for the Khmer Rouge also allows me to go on living the mundane details of life (Pg. 192).” In one camp that Loung and her sister Chou stayed at, they had a moment to speak of their father’s death. Loung regrets not being able to help him be stronger like
The violence the Cambodians are experiencing and inflicting upon one another is not in the nature of the nation’s citizens. David Chandler explains that many Cambodians saw “their country as essentially a happy place, being visited by war.” He also says they were stunned by the soldiers of the Khmer Rouge, who “‘didn’t even look like Cambodians, they seemed to be from the jungle, or a different world.’” In the film, the Khmer Rouge close in on the capital city by cutting off the road to the airport.
Ung, Loung. First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers. New York: HarperCollinsPublishers, 2000. Print.
As we got further and further into the Vietnam War, few lives were untouched by grief, anger and fear. The Vietnamese suffered the worst hardship; children lay dead in the street, villages remained nothing but charred ashes, and bombs destroyed thousands of innocent civilians. Soldiers were scarred emotionally as well as physically, as