Surviving to the Killing Fields

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I was born in Phnom Penh, Cambodia to a middle class family to both highly educated parents. My mother enrolled me in a French grammar school when I was five. Education was important in my family.

April was traditionally a month of family gatherings and New Year festivities. But in 1975, it was marked by bombs, gunfire, screaming, and men in black uniforms throughout Phnom Penh, ordering all citizens to leave their homes and belongings for three or four days.

Darkness within darkness engulfed me. Unfortunately, I was not able return until present day.

This is a photo of me tells many tales of hardships, sorrows, survival, and a ticket to freedom. I lived through bombing,flying bullets, witnessing bloodshed, escaping for my life at the age of seven. The Killing Fields took millions of innocent lives. Every step of my existence was a nightmare, from the refugee camps in Thailand to Santa Rosa, California.

In October 1981, I arrived in America—the land of the free. But another nightmare awaited me: struggling with the language and culture, not fitting in, and feeling completely alone and isolated. Once again, I struggled to settle and survive.

Assimilating and adapting to a new culture was not easy. As I walked to school, I was told to go back to my country and was taunted with claims that I ate dogs and cats. My ticket to freedom had become another war zone.

This photo reminds me of my past, my determination, and the person I have become today. It reminds me of what it took to survive and to taste freedom in a land full of opportunities.

Photo caption if needed.

Sopheap Hang

Sopheap Hang survived Cambodia’s Killing Fields (1975—1979 ) under the Khmer Rouge, a regime that sought to transform the country into a classless agrarian society. Millions of people were forced into brutal labor camps, while intellectuals, city residents, ethnic minorities, and former government officials were systematically persecuted. Nearly two million Cambodians died from execution, starvation, disease, exhaustion, and forced labor. Sopheap resettled in Santa Rosa, Sonoma County, in 1981