First They Killed My Father

In the early morning of April 17, 1975, heavily armed Khmer Rouge forces appeared on the streets of the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh. The ragged, black clad soldiers were met with cheers from much of the populace. The civil war that had dragged on for five years was finally over. With the city suffering from food shortages and swelling refugee population there was great hope that some form of normality could now be restored.

For the newly established Democratic Kampuchea under Pol Pot, April 17, 1975 became the beginning of “Year Zero.” Radical action was taking to effectively wipe the slate clean. All property was seized by the state, currency was eliminated, and the cities were evacuated. Within 72 hours Phnom Penh was completely emptied. Hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children were herded out onto the roads by armed guards. They were driven on foot to villages all over Cambodia. Democratic Kampuchea was to be a classless, agrarian utopia.

During the weeks immediately following the expulsion thousands of people perished on the road. Over the next four years of Khmer Rough rule, an estimated 2 million Cambodians, ¼ of the population, would die from starvation and disease or at the hands of Khmer Rouge.

First They Killed My Father author Loung Ung

First They Killed My Father is the captivating and horrifying tale of one of those families expelled in April of 1975. The narrator and author, Loung Ung, was five years old when the Khmer Rouge troops seized the capital. She, her six siblings, and her Mother and Father were forced out of their home and marched west toward the Thai border.

It quickly becomes evident that despite it's communist overtones there is a well-defined hierarchy in Democratic Kampuchea. As April 17 people, the last to join the revolution, and city-dwellers, Luong and her family find themselves at the bottom. Further, her father's high rank in the ousted government, does not bode well for the family's future.

First They Killed my Father, while factual and historical, does not read like history. None of the facts found in a typical biography are presented. It is written as a narrative through the eyes of a young Luong Ung. Information is presented through the veil of a 5 year old's comprehension of her observations. In the following text Luong is describing some Khmer Rouge soldiers who have just arrived in Phnom Penh.

Most look young and all are thin and dark-skinned, like the peasant workers at our uncle's farm, with greasy long hair flowing past their shoulders. Long, greasy hair is unacceptable for girls in Cambodia and a sign that one does not take care of her appearance. Men with long hair are looked down upon and regarded with suspicion. It is believed that men who wear their hair long must have something to hide.

Together with the voice, the immediacy of text, written in the present tense serves to bring the reader alongside Luong and her family as they trudge down the dusty road, under guard, destination unknown. The building fear of the brutal Khmer Rouge soldiers as people disappear is almost palpable. Further, the heartache Luong feels over lost and missing family members and the hunger pangs that gnaw at her as starvation ravages her body transcend the pages almost becoming too real.

Today, Cambodia is a stable, peaceful place. Cambodians on the whole seem to be a happy people with ready smiles. It's difficult to imagine that less than 40 years ago the country plunged into the abyss. First They Killed my Father is a testament to the unflagging spirit of the Cambodian people. Further, it is a good introduction to a piece of history that may have been overshadowed by the Vietnam war and good reading for any administration considering proppring up a genocidal dictatorship.