00:00:00SLOAN: All right, this is Stephen Sloan. The date is October 27, 2015. This is
my interview with Ambassador Sichan Siv. We're at his home in San Antonio,
Texas. This is an interview with the Texas Holocaust and Genocide Commission's
Survivors of Genocide Oral History Project. Thank you, Ambassador, for sitting
down with us today.
SIV: It's my pleasure.
SLOAN: I would like to start, if I could, as we said before the recording began,
we've had a chance to read your book and enjoyed getting the opportunity to hear
about some of your experiences there, but for those who aren't as familiar with
it, if you could, give us a bit of an idea of your early life there in Cambodia
and some of your experiences growing up in your village.
SIV: I was born in a village near the airport which is about a mile, less than a
mile, from the terminal. When you go to Cambodia, you fly into Phnom Penh
Airport. Then, you get to my village before you see the rest of the country. It
00:01:00was three years after the end of World War II, and my father was a police chief.
So, I, in a sense, belong to a law enforcement family. My father was a police
chief. My brother was among the first to graduate from the National Police
Academy, which is like the Quantico of Cambodia. Two of my uncles were police
officers. That's how my upbringing was, and my father died when I was nine years
old. My mother, knowing that education was important, worked really hard to send
me to the best school in the kingdom. At one point, she had to sell lotus leaves
which were used in poor countries in the fifties and the sixties to wrap produce
that people bought in the markets every morning. They didn't have refrigerators,
so people would go to the market every morning to buy their fresh produce. I
00:02:00went through high school, and after I finished, I went to work for an airline
company, the National Airlines of Cambodia. I flew all over Asia. I've been even
to China at the peak of the Cultural Revolution, and what I saw there was
unbelievable. I never thought that a few years later that revolution would reach
my homeland.
So, the war broke out in Cambodia. The Cambodians were fighting against the Viet
Cong and North Vietnamese in '70 for a few years and then against the Khmer
Rouge. I was working for CARE [Cooperative for Assistance and Relief
Everywhere], which is a relief agency. My colleagues and I were trying to save
the lives of many thousands of refugees that fled the war-torn countryside to
00:03:00seek safety and shelter in cities in the capital of Phnom Penh.
SLOAN: I know you're in a situation where the violence came to the capital last.
SIV: That's correct.
SLOAN: And the Communist control of the countryside came first.
SIV: Absolutely.
SLOAN: Now, can I ask--I know when your father passed away in 1957 it changed
things for your family, as far as the socioeconomic position of the family and
things like that. Can you talk a little bit about your memories there?
SIV: We went overnight from sort of a well-to-do family, in a sense, a middle
class family, to a level of subsistence. That's why I mentioned a moment ago
that my mother worked very hard to bring us up. She knew that education was
important. She wanted me to go to the best school in the kingdom, so I was sent
00:04:00to the top high school in the country. It was like the Phillips Academy of
Cambodia, in a sense. I finished school and my first job was a flight attendant.
SLOAN: I know there's a lot of pressure in your home country and in other
surrounding countries on the exams and the exam system. Can you tell me a little
bit how that was for you?
SIV: Oh, my goodness. Cambodia was under the French rule for ninety years. When
I was born, we were still under the French, so in a way, I could have gotten
French citizenship. The French influence was just enormous in the area of
cultural and other activities, but primarily in education. We studied everything
in French. French was my second language, and France was the symbol of modern
00:05:00civilization. We saw the world through France. France was the modern country.
Everything was France, France, France, until 1953 when Vice President Richard
Nixon came to visit. Then, our teachers told us that there was another country
much bigger and farther away than France; it's called the United States of
America. That was the first time I heard of the USA. So, in terms of exams, yes,
everything was sort of measured by exams, papers and exams. We were supposed to
absorb everything. Students were trained in a very strict discipline. You're not
allowed to interrupt teachers, totally different from when I got to Columbia
some years later. I saw that it was day and night, where students interrupt
professors, and so on and so forth. So, everything, the semester, the year, from
00:06:00one year to another, is always measured by exams.
SLOAN: I know you related that your position in the family was as the family
mourner after your father died. Can you tell a little bit about what that meant
for you, as far as being a young boy?
SIV: Somehow, I was chosen to be the official mourner of the family. When my
father died, and later when my aunt, my grandmother, I was always the one to be
the official mourner. I don't know how this ritual became, but the mourner
shaved his head and was draped in white. He usually sits in front of the coffin
when the coffin is paraded to the temples to be cremated. Cambodians are
00:07:00primarily Buddhists, and that is a tradition--I don't know when it started.
Everybody, all the dead, had to be cremated, then we collected the ashes at the
end, put them in the urns, and placed them either at home or in the temple. Each
family built a funeral temple to keep the ashes of their relatives.
SLOAN: I see. Now, in your family, with this change in status of your mother
having to work to support the family to send you to school and to support your
siblings, were you working as well during that period?
SIV: I was working. I was helping with my mother. My brother and I, before he
went off to the police academy, would get up early in the morning to fetch
00:08:00water. Because there was no running water, we had to go to the pond, fetch
water, and look for firewood. That's the sort of household chores that we did
every day. When my brother went off, I was the only one who did everything--made
sure that we have enough firewood and made sure we had enough water. I was
always at my mother's side when she was cooking because she would ask me to
taste. I learned how to cook, or at least I thought I learned how to cook, when
I was observing her. Which is sort of a trademark that was left with me; I still
enjoy cooking.
SLOAN: Now, can you tell me a little bit about what your village was like? I
know later your story is going to be in the city. You're going to move from the
smaller village into the larger city. Can you tell me a little bit about what
00:09:00your village was like, or your memories of your village?
SIV: Well, there was no electricity. And, of course, I mentioned there was no
water. Water was brought in by either truck or people who went to the nearby
pond to get the water from ponds. There was no television at that time. There
was radio, so as a part of entertainment, we listened to the radio in the
evening. It was a combination of news, comedy, and theater a few hours a day.
Then, we would go to bed by nine o'clock.
SLOAN: Were these Cambodian broadcasts that you were listening to, or are you
listening to international broadcasts?
SIV: Yeah, we were listening to Cambodian broadcasts. You could also hear other
broadcasts like Voice of America, which was also very good for us to get news
from overseas.
00:10:00
SLOAN: When did you finish your schooling, your primary schooling?
SIV: My primary schooling was in 1959, '60, '61--a long time ago. Then, the high
school is a seven year program, four years and then three--four years for what
they called college and then three years for the lycée. So, when you finished
the seven years, you have the baccalaureate deuxième partie, the second
baccalaureate. Then, you would go to college, like four years of law school. You
go straight for four-year law school, medical school is seven years, and others
are less. I went to law school. I wanted to be a diplomat, and I wanted to join
the school of administration which trained diplomats and other people who worked
in the government. That's why I went to law school.
SLOAN: What do you think was in you that made you want to be a diplomat or
00:11:00wanted to choose that career? What interested you in that?
SIV: I was interested in going overseas. I wanted to be a doctor at the
beginning. When my father died. that plan changed because spending seven years
in medical school is a lot of money. I wanted to get something to support my
mother and our family fast. The first job was flight attendant, so I got that
job. For flight attendants, at the time, you have flexible hours, you know. You
fly when you have a schedule. In the evening, you can go to school, and the law
school offered evening classes. I also went to the liberal arts to get a degree
in liberal arts, so I went to two different schools plus a full-time job.
00:12:00
SLOAN: I know as someone who is going to be well travelled later on, that must
have been an exciting experience to see these new places.
SIV: I was excited, especially when you think that you can be in three countries
in one day, and then come back home and spend the night. And you get to bring
beautiful stuff to your family. That was quite exciting, and I enjoyed that very
much. One day, I get up in the morning, I fly to Singapore, and then in the
afternoon I fly to Indonesia. I use the present tense because I want to keep
that sort of lively. After, we fly to Bali, Indonesia, back to Singapore, and
then back to Phnom Penh. We got back to Phnom Penh by eight o'clock in the
evening, so I can certainly catch a movie with some friends.
SLOAN: As you think about the situation within your country, during this period
00:13:00in the 1960s, what is the political climate like in the 1960s, as far as
stability or peace in the country?
SIV: Cambodia in the sixties was very peaceful--very peaceful, very
stable--thanks primarily to Prince Sihanouk. Incidentally, his birthday is on
the thirty-first of October, Halloween day. He was the one who really fought for
independence from France without any bloodshed. We got our independence from
France, incidentally, like one week after Nixon visited. Nixon came to Cambodia
on October 30, 1953, as the Vice President, and on November ninth, Cambodia
became independent from France. In my generation, we grew up dreaming about
going to France to study or to continue our education. That was the hope of
00:14:00everyone, to go to Paris, study in one of the grandes écoles--one of the big
schools there, and then going back and working to help the country. But,
everything changed after the war broke out in 1970. All along, I was trying to
adapt myself. When I couldn't go to medical school after my father died, the
dreams sort of faded away. I got whatever I could find. The first job was flight
attendant. I got that job and went to two different schools.
SLOAN: Even as you were travelling with that job in the 1960s, you're aware of
instability around Cambodia and war breaking out around Cambodia.
SIV: Only in Vietnam, you know. There's only a war in Vietnam. Laos was not that
00:15:00striking in terms of awareness. We knew that there was a war in Vietnam, but in
Cambodia, it was very peaceful. Nobody heard anything about the bombing. It
wasn't until 1970, when the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese began to attack
Cambodia, that we realized that we were really a fragile country.
SLOAN: Can you walk me through your experience with that, when you became aware
of it, and how it began to affect the situation for you?
SIV: Well, I think it wasn't until the Viet Cong attacked the airport in 1971
that we knew that the danger was really real. Somehow, the Cambodian forces were
able to push the Viet Cong back far away, but for some time they were able to
00:16:00launch rockets into the capital. The Khmer Rouge later took over from the Viet
Cong and North Vietnamese, and they instilled in the population a sense of fear
every day. When, I saw rockets killing children, women, and innocent people in
kindergarten or in the markets, that broke my heart. That's why I left my
teaching job to work for CARE, the relief organization trying to help those
refugees and the displaced people who fled the war-torn countryside.
SLOAN: I know Khmer Rouge, as they rise, they're drawing on the elements of
anti-French feeling that may have existed. They're using that as a way to push
their program. Had you felt that before, that there was a resentment? Did you
00:17:00feel that before among the population?
SIV: No, I didn't feel there was an anti-French movement, because somehow we got
along very well with the French. Cambodia was one of the few countries in the
world that got along with their former colonial power. That's why people like
me, who grew up in the post-colonial period, wanted to go to France. We thought
that education was much better, that it was a ticket to a bigger and better
life. I never thought that I would be, in any outlook, coming to the United
States. As I've mentioned many times in my book, Golden Bones, the dream was to
go there and get a diploma from one of the grandes écoles and then go back and
help the country.
00:18:00
So, the Khmer Rouge, as you probably know, the leaders were a group of a small
group of about nine people. They were interrelated by marriages and ideologies.
Most of them went to France, just like everybody else in the fifties, to study.
Many of them were on government scholarship. Instead of studying hard, they
joined the French Communist Party and the French Socialist Movement, and some
failed their examinations. They were considered as outcasts of the Cambodian
society. When they went back, they found a society that was peaceful and what
the French people call joie de vivre, the happiness of life. They went to the
most remote area in Cambodia and tried to convince those people, who had never
seen a city or a city life, that if we fight together, this is all for you--all
00:19:00these houses, these beautiful villas, they are all for you. They were able to,
to a certain degree, brainwash those young people.
When I was under the Khmer Rouge, one of the most difficult things for me was to
try to not to say anything, because what I saw was totally wrong. I was walking
with a group of Khmer Rouge soldiers, when we came upon a railroad track. They'd
never seen a railroad track before. They thought it was a long stairway to
somewhere. These are the kind of people who have the power of life or death over
ordinary citizens, so their bloody revolution turned out to be a disaster, as we
00:20:00have already seen.
SLOAN: Yeah, very backward, very uneducated. Tell me a little bit more about
your decision to work for CARE, because that was a very different. You were on a
career path, but that's a very different choice for you. Can you tell me a
little about making that decision?
SIV: Well, there's a gap between that and after I left the airlines. I was laid
off by the airlines because, when the war started, they began to cut off their
flights, you know, their destinations. I was the youngest one among the flight
attendant corps, so they let me go. I wanted to find other jobs. Again, I pass
an exam into the École Normale Supérieure, which is like the teaching college.
00:21:00I spent two years there and became a teacher. Teachers in Cambodia work for the
government. They belong to the Ministry of Education, at that time, so I had a
choice, a good choice because I graduated in the top of my class. I chose one
that was close to Phnom Penh, to the capital, so that I can continue to study. I
was a high school teacher for two years, teaching English language and
literature. When I saw these deaths and destruction, the children and women
getting killed in the market and kindergarten, I said I should try to do
something that is more concrete in terms of immediate help for these people.
That's why I went to CARE. They were looking for somebody who speaks good
English, who could interact with all kinds of people of various backgrounds, and
00:22:00I got the job. That's when I travelled around in the country in very dangerous
circumstances, trying to respond very quickly to the disaster. When there were
people who have fled from war-torn areas, seeking safety and shelter, we were
there immediately to provide them food, clothing, and shelter.
SLOAN: I see, so CARE had a fairly big presence in Cambodia?
SIV: Yeah, CARE and a few other relief organizations had a very big presence,
because the United States government, which had been helping the Cambodian
government, relied on those NGOs (non-governmental organizations) to help
support the relief efforts.
SLOAN: And so, with that assignment, you're going to villages throughout
00:23:00Cambodia--hotspots in Cambodia where the rural people are suffering?
SIV: Exactly. We go through some dangerous areas, you know, because we don't
know whether we're going to drive through an ambush by the Viet Cong, the North
Vietnamese, or the Khmer Rouge. In the war situation, I learned how to just keep
my head low. I never questioned the morality of the war. My job was to help
people survive in the very critical situation.
SLOAN: Were you travelling and supported by government forces when you went into places?
SIV: No, no. We don't want to travel with government forces.
SLOAN: You become targets.
SIV: That's right. You'll become targets. You want to be all alone. I mean, no
Red Cross sign--¬¬nothing. They don't respect anything, so we try to be low
00:24:00key, and we get in and out very quickly.
SLOAN: As you travelled from place to place, you probably had a view of the
Khmer Rouge movement, how it was growing, how their territory or control was expanding.
SIV: I did have some knowledge of it, but I didn't want to pay attention. I
don't want that to cloud my objective in helping people, so I focused on helping people.
SLOAN: When did you begin to realize that the whole country was in danger or the
government was in danger?
SIV: When I was called to meet the director and he told a few of us, like four
or five of us, that we would be given a seat in an aircraft--an evacuation if
and when the time comes. Then suddenly, I realized that the time is already
00:25:00there. I didn't know whether it's an aircraft or a helicopter, but he just said
that when the time comes, when there is an evacuation, you'll be given a seat,
and you cannot bring anybody with you, just a small bag, and that they'll let
you know. That was like a week before the real time comes. By then, the
situation was quite chaotic. The day of the evacuation was April 12, 1975; two
days after President Ford gave an address to the joint session of Congress. This
has a lot of political impact, because both Houses were controlled by democrats.
In January, Ford asked for additional support for both sides of Vietnam and
00:26:00Cambodia, to help support their lives. It was turned down. It was turned down.
That was in January, so in April, Ford went back. On April tenth, he said, "As
far as South Vietnam and Cambodia are concerned, for this administration, the
time is short and the options are few." I heard that speech over Voice of
America and my heart sank. I said that this is the end. So, to answer your
question, it was probably April tenth when I realized that the end is near.
Two days later, the week after I was told that I would be given a seat, the US
embassy came to my office. A guy from USAID (United States Agency for
International Development) came to my office and said, "You ought to be at the
00:27:00embassy within one hour if you want to be airlifted out of Cambodia." I said,
"Well, I have a meeting with the governor of Kampong Speu." He sort of cut me
off and shut me up and said, "One hour, if you want to be airlifted out of
Cambodia." I said, "Okay, okay. I'll make it," just to let him be assured that
he had finished his mission. His mission was to deliver the message to me.
Instead of going to the embassy, I went to meet with the governor, because there
were some three thousand refugee families stranded in his province. We used to
carry out supplies of food and medical supplies by road, but the road had been
cut. The road had been cut previously by the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese and
00:28:00then by the Khmer Rouge. So, there were some three thousand refugee families
stranded in that province. I thought that by going to the meeting, I would be
able to save the lives of those people. When I finished the meeting, I went to
the embassy. I was told the last chopper had taken off thirty minutes before, so
I missed the last helicopter by thirty minutes. Then, five days later, on April
17, the Khmer Rouge came in.
SLOAN: This has been described by several people that have experienced it, but I
would like to hear you talk about the chaos of that, of the Khmer Rouge coming
in to the capital, the forced evacuation, and your experience of it.
SIV: I wrote a few open pieces in the New York Times, one of them was called,
00:29:00"Last Breakfast in Cambodia." That was the day that the Khmer Rouge came in on
April 17. I went to work just like a regular day. I stopped at a street-side
restaurant to have a bowl of noodles, then I went to my office. Suddenly, I saw
these people in black pajamas walking in the middle of the street toward me. I'm
seen, so I break to a screeching sound, turn my car around, and go to the
hotel--a major hotel there, Hotel Le Royal, which the Red Cross has turned into
an international Red Cross neutral zone. They put the Red Cross flags all
00:30:00around. As I have mentioned earlier on, they don't respect anything. They don't
respect the Red Cross flag. They don't respect any international law. I was able
to get inside. I told my brother early on, the police officer, to be there if
something happened because that's a neutral zone. I found my brother in the
chaotic afternoon when they forced everybody to get out of the hotel.
I spent the whole day on April 17 in an emergency surgical room that the Red
Cross set up to operate on people who were wounded that day. I was the
interpreter. Most of them came from Europe and many of them speak neither French
00:31:00nor English. They were Scandinavian and so on. A few spoke French. I was doing
the translation between French and English and Khmer, the Cambodian language. It
was quite confusing, because I spoke French to the English-speaking staff, and I
spoke English to the French-speaking staff by translating from Khmer, but
somehow we were able to communicate.
At the end of the afternoon, the Khmer Rouge came in and forced everybody out.
One of the nurses asked them, "Where are you going?" One of the nurses told me,
"To the French embassy." I found my brother, and we went to the French embassy.
When we got there, we couldn't get in. They didn't allow non-Europeans or
Cambodian citizens to get in. So, I took off my white undershirt and tied it to
00:32:00the antenna as a sign of peace, and we drove to our sister's house. There,
everybody was already packed because the Khmer Rouge had been telling everybody
to leave their homes. We left that evening of April 17.
SLOAN: So the French embassy was locked down, secure.
SIV: Yes, people were still able to get out if you were not Cambodian.
Europeans, Asians, Indians, and so on, were able to get in, but not the
Cambodians. In a way, I was saved because later on the Khmer Rouge came to the
embassy, got all the Cambodians out, and killed them.
SLOAN: The people you were translating for at the hospital, these were people
00:33:00that were wounded at the invasion of the city?
SIV: That very day.
SLOAN: I would think, by this time, you had an idea you were in danger because
of your association or your place, so what steps do you take at that point to?
You talked earlier about keeping your head down. What steps do you take at this
point to try to keep your head down--for more safety for your family and for yourself?
SIV: I didn't speak. I didn't see anything, I didn't hear anything, I didn't
know anything. You know the three monkeys? But, my mother knew that I was in
danger, not only that, but that I would put everybody in danger, because I spoke
English, I worked for an airline, and I worked for a US organization. My
00:34:00presence not only would and did jeopardize my life, but also would put everybody
in danger, so she asked me to leave, which was, of course, very tough for her.
That was ten days after the arrival of the Khmer Rouge. She gave me her wedding
ring, her scarf--which is right there in the frame--and a bag of rice--that
yellow thing is the bag of rice. Those are the two pieces, my family heirlooms,
that I was able to bring with me from Cambodia. She gave me her scarf, a bag of
rice, her wedding ring, and she told me to run and no matter what happens, never
give up hope. And that was the vision that she instilled to me since I was very
young. No matter what happens, never give up hope.
00:35:00
SLOAN: Just to clarify, you met your brother, you went to your sister's, and
then you made your way back to your village before you fled?
SIV: That's right, to my father's village, which was a mistake because everybody
knew our background. We were looking for comfort from relatives and so on, but
some of them might have been to the Khmer Rouge.
SLOAN: I was going to say, that's one of the things that must have put you at
high risk. Everyone knew your family, so you flee. What are your thoughts on
fleeing? Which direction do you go? What is your plan?
SIV: Well, of course, I was thinking of Thailand, but Thailand was so far away.
Vietnam was the closest one, but Vietnam had just fallen to the Communists. I
was not going to jump from a frying pan into the fire. So, my hope was Thailand,
and I rode the bicycle for three weeks using fake passes and false excuses to
00:36:00get through the Khmer Rouge checkpoints.
SLOAN: Where did you get these passes or how did you falsify them? Did you make
them yourself?
SIV: I made them myself. At one point, I asked a little boy who was playing in
front of a house to get me a piece of paper [because] I want to roll him a
cigarette. He went inside to get me a piece of paper, and I wrote the pass
myself. I wrote with red ink, and the first guy who saw that asked me, "Why did
you have this pass with the red ink?" They only write in black, you know. You
write in red when you're angry. I told him that I was getting the pass from my
village chief, and they didn't have time to get the black pen, so he just wrote
it. I changed the date. First, I set [the pass] for three days, then I changed
00:37:00the three to seven, because in Cambodian numbers, the three and seven--you only
had to put a tail up [on the three], it'll become seven. And I put one before
the seven; it became seventeen days. (laughter) But my luck ran out later on
when I was captured near Thailand.
SLOAN: How often are you being detained and your papers being checked during
this period?
SIV: Especially when you get from one village to another, they would normally
check, but most importantly, when you cross the border between two provinces.
And some places they have to have a seal of the province. When I did not have, I
just went on.
SLOAN: I know you're trying not to speak because your accent might give you
away, and you don't want to speak French. You've probably thrown [away] your
00:38:00glasses or you hide your glasses.
SIV: I threw away my glasses.
SLOAN: Yeah, because these are all signs of Western--
SIV: Yeah, wearing glasses was a sign of education. You could read.
SLOAN: How far did you get toward Thailand on this bicycle trip?
SIV: Well, it's about five hundred miles all together. I was in the southeastern
part of Cambodia when I started my journey, near the Vietnamese border in the
region known as Parrot's Beak because it looks like a parrot's beak that juts
into Vietnam. From Parrot's Beak, I went all the way to the northwest. It's like
going from Florida to Washington State but in a smaller scale. After being on a
bike for three weeks, I was captured near Thailand. They suspected that I was
00:39:00trying to cross the border, which was my intention, so they tie my arms behind
my back and were going to kill me that night. A truck driver, whom I had met a
few days before, saved my life. He told the Khmer Rouge that I was an innocent
person wandering around looking for my family. After that, I was put in forced
labor camps. The whole country was a huge labor camp; it was the killing fields.
We were forced to work eighteen hours a day. We were given a bowl of rancid soup
a day to eat. At night, I never knew if I would be alive the following morning.
When I woke up I said that I would make it to freedom.
SLOAN: You're in the rice fields? Were you growing rice? What sort of forced labor?
SIV: We did everything, we dug irrigation canals, we cleared land, we planted
00:40:00rice, we harvested rice, we demolished houses, we built barracks, everything,
everything. Eighteen hours a day.
SLOAN: I know you're a hard worker, but you haven't done that sort of work before.
SIV: No, all along I was more a city person, an urban boy, but when I was
smaller, my mother sent me to the villages to spend time with my cousins who
were farmers. So, I had some idea on how to cultivate rice, but I never did it
myself. I just saw and observed. But, this was real stuff, I mean, real hard work.
SLOAN: In this camp that you were living in, or in this jail you were living in,
00:41:00were you able to interact with other people in forced labor?
SIV: No, I didn't trust anybody. I was polite and that's it. Some people talked
openly between ourselves to try to escape, but I did not buy into that because I
didn't know if he was an agent of the Khmer Rouge or not. I kept my mouth shut.
I closed my eyes. In a sense, I didn't see anything, I didn't hear anything, I
didn't speak of anything.
SLOAN: It would seem to me in that situation there would be some point where you
would give up hope or you would lose hope. I don't know if that was true for you?
SIV: Well, I never gave up hope, but at one point, I was at the end of my rope,
so to speak, and even before I jumped off that truck, at that moment, I said, Am
00:42:00I going to do this? I'm going to jump off this truck, probably break my neck and
get killed right there, or I would survive. But, I said that there are only two
kinds of people in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, those who had died, and those
who will die. I said that if I die, I would die a free man, so I jumped off that
truck. I was caught in a piece of lumber, and I was dragged for a few hundred
yards before I was flung off.
SLOAN: Tell me that story, because I know you saw in that an opportunity to get
closer to the border for a greater possibility of escape. Tell me about taking
that assignment.
SIV: In January 1976, they are looking for a crane operator. I understand that
00:43:00they were going to use a crane to pick up timbers found along the Thai border,
so that would increase my chances to escape. I've never been in a crane in my
life, but I raised my hand, and I said I was a crane operator. So, at night, I
burned small candles, I pulled a blanket over my head, and I started reading
instructions. That fact alone would have cost me my life, if I were caught
reading and reading something in English. But, I had nothing to lose, either I
die or I survive. During the subsequent trips to the border, I began to study
the land area. I was sitting in the back of the timber truck. Because they
00:44:00brought the crane and left it there near the Thai border, we would go from the
nearby village to the timber pickup point. I studied and learned the area. I
found out the shortest distance to Thailand was somewhere between the timber
pickup point and the nearest village.
On February 13, 1976, I was alone in the back of the timber truck. I couldn't
jump to the left nor to the right, because the driver or the Khmer Rouge soldier
with an AK-47 would have seen me through the rearview mirror. What I did, I was
on the top, and I crawled on top of the timber all the way to the back. Then, I
just dropped myself behind the truck. On the way down, I was caught on a piece
00:45:00of lumber, and I was dragged for a few hundred yards before I was flung off.
Then, I picked myself up and I began to run, to crawl, to walk, to swim, for
three days, having nothing to eat or drink. I fell in a booby trap. I was
severely wounded, but I wasn't killed. The trap consisted of Punji sticks, sharp
bamboo sticks. They were supposed to catch the unlucky victims at the stomach or
the heart, but I'm tall for a Cambodian, so the sticks hit me at my legs. I
pulled myself out, and I began to limp along until I got to Thailand, where I
was jailed for illegal entry.
SLOAN: Was there a Khmer Rouge presence on the border when you crossed into Thailand?
00:46:00
SIV: No, if there were, I wouldn't be alive.
SLOAN: When you said when you went into Thailand, were you going into a refugee camp?
SIV: No, I was jailed for illegal entry. They caught me at the border. I ran
into a farmer. I told him, "I just arrived from Cambodia, what do I do?" He
said, " Just stay there. I'll go and get my father." So, he went to get his
father. When the father came, he asked me, "Did you see any Khmer Rouge along
the border?" I said, "I don't know where the border was." He said, "You see
those bamboo trees? That's where the border is." I said, "No, I sat there for
two hours and I didn't see any." So, they reported to the border patrols, and
they came to take me to their chief. They gave me a huge meal. I couldn't eat
because my mind was sore having nothing to eat for three days. They took me to
00:47:00the temple to be blessed by the monks, and the following morning they sent me to
prison. There, they realized I was a refugee. I was there for a week or two, and
then they sent me to a refugee camp.
SLOAN: In the refugee camp, you got an assignment where you got to teach again,
right? At the refugee camp?
SIV: I volunteered to do that, it was not an assignment.
SLOAN: Oh, okay.
SIV: I saw many people suffering from mental depression because they sat around
all day, feeling sorry about the pas,t and worrying about the future. I thought
I would do something to help them out, so I organized English classes. It was a
00:48:00win-win proposal. Many of them were going to an English-speaking
country--Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK, the United States. They were
able to get some basic English and at the same time, they were able to get their
minds off their sorrows and their worries.
SLOAN: Who was running the refugee camp?
SIV: The UNHCR, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, of course, with
the support of the Thai authorities.
SLOAN: How were conditions in the camp itself?
SIV: Well, it was hot, filthy, humid, and depressing, but for me, I'm thankful
that I was alive. I usually look from the positive side, and I wanted to help
them out. That's why I organized those English classes.
SLOAN: I would imagine you have to go through a processing there at the camp?
00:49:00
SIV: Yeah, the minute you arrive at the camp. In general practice, a new person
is interviewed by the UNHCR to determine the eligibility. What is a refugee?
That is somebody who has fled his or her home country for fear of persecution.
Of course, they know very well that the Khmer Rouge was killing Cambodians, so
these people fled for fear of persecution. That is already founded. The idea is,
do I have any connections? In Australia, none. New Zealand, none. The UK, none.
France, yes, I have a lot of friends in France. I grew up in the French system.
I had nobody in the United States. I don't know a single human being in the
00:50:00United States. My prospect was to France, but the people in France told me that
it's very hard to get a job there in 1976. France was going through a recession,
and they said if you have the chance, you should try to go to the United States.
I had no connections in the US, but I was interviewed anyway. My former former
supervisor was, by then, already transferred to Sri Lanka. She knew that I was
safely arrived in Thailand. She contacted her college roommate in Connecticut
and asked them to sponsor me, so this family, Bob and Nancy Charles from
Wallingford, Connecticut, out of the goodness of their hearts, brought me in.
00:51:00Otherwise, I did not know anybody. I didn't even know Bob and Nancy until I got there.
SLOAN: Were you able to get information while you were in the camp on your
family or other people that you knew?
SIV: Yeah, but there was no information. They went to the Red Cross. There is a
tracing center where you fill out forms, but there was nothing. It was not until
four or five years later I learned that my entire family was killed.
SLOAN: And so you left Thailand when?
SIV: June 4, 1976. I was there for a few months, which is a record time. Most
people spend a few years there. Many were born there in the refugee camps. So,
June 4, 1976, I arrived in Wallingford, Connecticut, with my mother's scarf, my
empty rice bag, and two dollars.
00:52:00
SLOAN: A long way from Cambodia.
SIV: It was a long way, yeah.
SLOAN: Your English had to be a very big asset for you.
SIV: It was a very big asset, because the big challenge for refugees to go to a
new life, the first one, is the language. If you don't have the language, you're
going to have a hard, hard time. That's important for them to assimilate quite
quickly to the country where they are going, whether it's Australia, New
Zealand, and so on. In my time, there were only four or five countries in the
world that were taking refugees.
SLOAN: And so you've become an apple picker in Connecticut? (laughs)
SIV: That's right. I was exhausted, and tired, and sick, but I was full of hope.
I wanted to start my life immediately being on my own feet, so I did everything
00:53:00that came my way to the best of my ability. My first job was picking apples, so
I picked a lot of apples. I ate a lot of apples, enough to last for a lifetime.
Then, I went on to the next one, cooking hamburgers, scooping ice cream. That
was another confusing situation, more confusing than picking apples. I've never
seen a hamburger in my life, and suddenly I was hearing, "Rare! Medium rare!" I
was holding the lettuce when the trainer said, "Hold the lettuce!" It took me
awhile to understand she didn't want me to put the lettuce on the hamburger.
Then, the ice cream--I only had known three ice cream flavors in Cambodia.
There, at Friendly's Ice Cream, they had twenty-one different flavors, and they
had the flavor of the month. I had to memorize all of them. Then, at the cash
00:54:00register, the dimes were smaller but worth more than nickels. It was so difficult.
SLOAN: Doesn't make any sense, does it?
SIV: No.
SLOAN: I know, at some point, you end up driving a taxi?
SIV: Next stop. Next stop New York, New York. I was in New York in January 1977.
I stood there in the street corner in Manhattan, and all these yellow checkered
cabs had a sign in the back, "Drivers wanted." So, I called and they asked me to
go and take a test. It's all about direction. How do you go from Yankee Stadium
to Madison Square Garden? I had no idea where places were, much less how to get
from one to another, so I just checked the boxes, the wrong boxes. At the end, I
00:55:00brought the sheet to the examiner. He looked at the boxes. He frowned. He looked
at me from head to toe. He shook his head. He turned away and said, "You
passed." So, I became a taxi driver.
SLOAN: I think it says something about you that you keep taking these jobs.
You're very ambitious. You take these jobs you don't know how to do, but then
you figure out how to do them. (laughs)
SIV: Yes. (laughs) So, I survived the Manhattan traffic, and a friend of mine
wrote to me. He said that you survived the Khmer Rouge, so you can take
Manhattan. The next year was a desk job. I was a statistician. I could hardly
pronounce the word, and when I went to the interview, the interviewer asked, "Do
you know anything about statistics?" I said, "Not really." I was really frank. I
said, "What is it? Can you explain it to me?" [The interviewer said,] "You know
how to add and subtract?" I said yes. [The interviewer said,] "Okay, you can
00:56:00have the job." So, I became a statistician.
SLOAN: (laughs) Is this still in New York?
SIV: In New York. It's all New York until I went to the White House.
SLOAN: I see.
SIV: Thirteen years later, and that's very unique for America, but there are a
few things in between. I got the scholarship to go to Columbia, and I worked at
a few places. I walked into work at the White House on February 13, 1989,
exactly thirteen years from the day I jumped off that truck. There's no other
place in the world that somebody could make it from the killing fields to the
White House in thirteen years. It's only in America.
SLOAN: Yeah, I know we're having to go over a lot of things that are happening
here, but how did that opportunity of the White House present itself?
00:57:00
SIV: Well, in the eighties, Martha and I were introduced to the Reagans. We got
invited to a few events at the Reagan White House. On July 13, 1988, I was the
dais guest of President Reagan and Vice President Bush in the Rose Garden. When
I was standing there, the thought never crossed my mind that I would be working
at the White House a few months later. I had already volunteered in the Bush
campaign, because I wanted to understand how presidential politics, presidential
campaigns, worked. Through friends, I got involved in the Bush campaign in New
York, and when Bush got elected, he asked me to go and work for him in the White
House. That is very, very unusual because there are hundreds and thousands of
people who volunteered in the presidential campaign, but I was among the lucky few.
00:58:00
SLOAN: How did you meet the Reagans?
SIV: I met the Reagans because I was invited to one of his receptions in New
York. Somehow we got ourselves on the mailing list for the White House, and we
received an invitation from the White House.
SLOAN: And then your initial assignment during Bush 41, what were you doing in
the White House then?
SIV: I was a Deputy Assistant for the President for Public Liaison, which was an
office that was founded by Eisenhower in the fifties. The office was to be the
liaison between the President and the American people. We were there to listen
to people about their thoughts and ideas and then relay them to the president
00:59:00and the senior staff. We were there to relay the President's policies and
position to the people--the teachers, the nurses, the truckers, the bankers, the
lawyers, and so on, so forth.
SLOAN: How did you find that work?
SIV: Very stimulating and very exciting. Because I came rather through a scenic
route you know, from killing fields in Cambodia to the White House, and I made
it quite in record time, thanks to America. That was a tribute to President Bush
and to America herself. During the Bush Administration, the Cold War ended, and
he managed the post-Cold War world exceptionally well. There was not a shot
01:00:00being fired in that period. That was due to his personal skill, leadership
skills, and diplomatic skills. And there I was, sitting at the White House
seeing history taking shape in front of my eyes. That was quite overwhelming.
SLOAN: Amazing time, yeah. As you think about your career, I know Bush
anticipated another term, so I'm sure you had to think, as most thought, this
position could go on into a second term. So, the change that came in '92, how
did that affect you?
SIV: Well, people were disappointed, of course, but life moves on. And there was
nobody more gracious than President and Mrs. Bush, you know. The transition went
very well, and he made sure that the next administration got off onto good
01:01:00ground--a good starting point. We were very disappointed because I was really
enjoying the ability to help people, to affect people's lives, but we had to
move on.
SLOAN: At that point, is that when you relocate to Texas?
SIV: No, no, we were living in New York. We were, sort of, both in New York and
Washington. And my wife, Martha, she would work for the World Bank after I moved
to the White House. She still had that job, and I had to look for some other job
in the private sector. Then, when George W. Bush got elected, I was sent to New
York to work at the United Nations.
SLOAN: Which was amazing, when Bush 43 came in the White House, because you had
the relationship. You knew all those connections that weren't there in the early
01:02:00period were back. So, tell me about when the UN opportunity was extended to you.
SIV: Well, the presidential appointees, this is what we call serving at the
pleasure of the President, and both President Bush 41 and 43 brought very good
people, an excellent team. Under 41, I had excellent colleagues at the White
House. I learned a lot from them. We had a lot of work, and together good work
we produced. ADA (Americans with Diabilities Act, passed under the Bush
administration) already turned thirty-five. We accomplished a lot under the
01:03:00leadership of President Bush and the same thing for 43. I was blessed. I was
lucky because I spoke a few languages already, and I knew how to interact with
people of different cultures. So, in a way, it was a natural environment for me.
I could relate to the French-speaking African ambassadors, I could relate to the
Latin American ambassadors with my Spanish, and, of course, my Asian colleagues
and Europeans, so I hit the ground running. I got there after 9/11, so the issue
of counter-terrorism became very important, not just for us, but for everyone in
the whole world. So, we accomplished a lot.
SLOAN: Were you in New York for 9/11?
SIV: No, I was in Washington. My family was in Washington.
01:04:00
SLOAN: You know, I think of your larger story, and you talked about from '76 to
'89, but then you're representing the United States at the United Nations just
thirteen years later. What do you think it says about your new home, when you
think about the United States, that you are the representative that was sent to
the UN? That's a little unusual, when I think of who comes to represent their
different nations at the United Nations.
SIV: That's a reflection of America. When I walked in, my colleagues from 191
countries looked at me and they saw America. They saw you. They saw America, her
strength, her greatness, her future. And each time I pronounced on behalf of the
01:05:00President and people of the United States, that was my proudest moment. But to
America, the United Nations is a very special place because we co-founded the
United Nations. We play host. New York is the world's largest diplomatic
community, and we are the largest benefactors to many United Nations programs,
from what I call cradle to coffin, from children to the aging and everything in
between--HIV, AIDS, housing, food, famine, women, human rights, we are there to
talk. We are doing this not to be popular; we're doing this because we are
Americans, because it's our duty to honor our country.
America has never been a conquering power. We transformed the ashes of Europe
01:06:00and Japan into parliaments and prosperity. We respond to earthquakes and
tsunamis. We support women and children, improving health and education. We give
voice to the voiceless and protect human rights. We link people around the
globe. We breed democratic prosperity. That is what makes America great. We are
blessed to be Americans, and you know, every morning when I wake up, I feel
blessed. When I go to sleep at night, I am thankful. I'm thankful for living in
this great nation of ours, where people have the right to dream and the
opportunity to turn their dreams into realities, where people can have a happy
home with faith, family, friends, and freedom.
01:07:00
SLOAN: I want to bring us back full circle and talk about your home country for
just a minute. I know that one of the things that can be very unsatisfying in
the aftermath of genocide is the lack of justice that comes for those that
caused so much pain and so much death. I know that that's been true for
Cambodia. If you could, talk a little bit about that search for justice or that
desire for justice in the aftermath of that experience in your country.
SIV: Well, there's social justice, if you're thinking about the international
tribunal in Cambodia. It started as a good idea. I was ambassador at the time.
01:08:00My personal opinion and the US government opinion converged. Of course, when I
speak, I always speak on behalf of the United States. We were working with our
friends and allies. The French, the Australians, the Japanese, they all
encouraged us to get involved, and we felt that it was a good thing to do. It's
a process to heal the nation, so we supported the process. But, this tribunal
took so long and cost a lot of money. I don't know how much it cost now, maybe
[$]60 [million], $70 million. They tried to bring five or six people to
trial--no, to justice--I have to be careful, not to say to trial. The idea was
to bring to justice.
The first verdict was for a guy who ran a concentration camp. Twenty-five
01:09:00thousand people died in that camp. You know what? He got nineteen years of
prison. I mean, you talk about crime against humanity, the crime is right here
and the verdict is right here. It was like a slap on the wrist. But when the
world's verdict was pronounced, you talked to anyone in Cambodia, they were
very, very upset. They were very angry. The victims became victimized again, so
the idea of healing the nation became antagonizing for people.
And for a country this poor, how much you can spend with $60 million? How many
nurses can you train? How many teachers can you train? How many hospitals, how
01:10:00many schools can you build? And then you spend $60 million to try to bring these
people to trial? Their justice became injustice. The tribunal became a tower, a
symbol of injustice, of impunity. I mean, you killed my mother, my brother, my
sister, fifteen people in my family. The correct verdict would be the death
sentence. They did kill my mother, my sister, my brother. They killed my family.
They killed my friends, my neighbors, my people, two million of them died. And
what did they get? Nineteen years. Later on, the verdict was translated into a
life sentence, but it's completely injustice, you see. Nobody cares about this
tribunal anymore, because instead of healing the nation, it makes the nation
01:11:00even more fractured.
SLOAN: I know you've had the opportunity to go back regularly to Cambodia. You
said every few years, generally, you go back. What has it been like for you to
go back and visit your country?
SIV: The first time I went back was 1992 when I was at the White House. That was
quite an emotional return, because I was escaping through the jungle, running
for my life, and in '92, I was returning as a White House senior staffer in the
US government aircraft. So, the emotional gap was very big. In '94, I was able
to bring my wife there, Martha, and then every few years we try to make it for
my wife to see the country and learn even more about the culture. Though things
01:12:00change, there are still problems, especially the problem of impunity and
injustice. Every five years since 1993, there had been an election. The first
few elections there were a lot of killings, a lot of violence, and there has
been less and less. There's still some violence there by people who had peaceful
demonstrations have been handled very violently.
So, they still have a lot of work to do, but they have come a long way. The
people are able to speak more and more freely, to express their opinion. There
is still a big gap between the rich and the poor. The richest are too rich, and
the poor are very poor. You will not believe that there is Rolls-Royce
dealership in Phnom Penh. This is a country that ranks among the poorest in the
01:13:00world. You can see a lot of corruption, and corruption breeds poverty, and
everybody knows that; the United Nations knows it, the World Bank knows that.
That's something that we have to continue to educate people on. The young people
probably have a better way to reason, to think, because many of them were born
after 1975. More than half of the common population did not know what happened
in 1975. These are the people who are the future of the country.
SLOAN: We're about to close, but we've had a chance today for you to tell your
story. I know that in the position you've been in, your ability to write has
given you the opportunity to tell your story several times and tell your story
01:14:00to not only a few people but to many people. What has it been like for you to be
able to share your experience and share your story?
SIV: It's very therapeutic, in a way. As I said in the opening of my book, it
took me thirty years to write Golden Bones, because I hesitated quite a bit.
When I arrived here in '76, each time I introduced myself, people asked me,
"When are going to write a book?" I was reluctant, but as I continued to travel
around the world, the questions persisted. So, when my wife, Martha, bought me a
laptop, I thought that this is the time to put pen to paper. The minute I
started putting my fingers to the keyboard, the words just came out. It's like
01:15:00turning the faucet on and the water just pouring out. It took me seven months to
finish, and then they were going back and forth between us and the publisher,
and we finally came to the final product. From the time I pressed the send
button until now, there has been a lot of gratification and satisfaction,
especially when people send us e-mails. Is it noisy? You want me to--
SLOAN: That's all right.
SIV: You want to tell--
SLOAN: Maybe, yeah.
SIV: Martha!
pause in recording
SLOAN: So you were saying from the moment you hit the send button--
SIV: After I hit the send button, I felt a very heavy burden lifted from my
shoulders. We are very gratified that people continue to thank us for sharing
01:16:00the story, and that is a great satisfaction. I always retell the story about an
Australian woman. She told me that she travelled from somewhere to Melbourne.
She was reading Golden Bones, and she was at the end of the story. She walked
from the plane to the luggage claim area, and her luggage was going around the
conveyor while she was standing there reading the book. They almost collected
her luggage before she finally finished. She said that it was so absorbing that
she wanted to finish the book before she collected her luggage. (laughs) So,
that is very satisfying, very gratifying.
SLOAN: Well, your story is an amazing story. I think of you as a young man
dreaming to be a diplomat and then being able to be a diplomat on the biggest stage.
01:17:00
SIV: That's right, so it's a blessing. Life is a blessing. I am very grateful
for that.
SLOAN: Well, I know you have a commitment that you have to get to that we want
to respect, so I want to thank you.
SIV: Oh, thank you for coming. Thank you for the pleasure of sharing this story.
I wish you all the best for your project.
SLOAN: Thank you.
end of interview