Cambodia then was on the verge
of the war that Prince Sihanouk had
hoped to avoid by staying “neutral”
while the North Vietnamese set up
bases near the Vietnam border. He
was travelling from Europe to
Moscow and Beijing when he was
overthrown in March 1970 by his
U.S.-backed prime minister, Lon Nol.
As the war spread, Ith Chhun
interpreted for an article I wrote for
The New York Times Magazine on
the terrible Cambodian army and
for stories for the old Washington
Star on battles down deceptively
tranquil roads. One morning, as we
drove towards the South Vietnam
border, we discovered the bodies of
90 Vietnamese, men, women and
children, mowed down by
Cambodian soldiers as anti-Vietnam
hatred ran wild.
Later, after I got back from
writing a book on the widening war,
I went down roads that seemed
serene and secure, turning back
when old men and women warned
Ith Chhun the Khmer Rouge were
nearby. While journalists were
getting killed on forays from Phom
Penh, I reported for the Chicago
Tribune on villages terrorised by
Khmer Rouge executions and on
high-level corruption in the capital.
These memories flashed by as I
read recently of the passing in New
Jersey of Dith Pran, the Cambodian
interpreter who became famous
from the film The Killing Fields. Dith
Pran worked mainly for The New
York Times correspondent Sydney
Schanberg. When Schanberg was
away and Ith Chhun was with his
family in some outlying town, Dith
Pran worked for me and others. He
and Ith Chhun were among a small
group of interpreters taking the
same risks, setting forth with
journalists in old Mercedes-Benz
cars from the Hotel Royale in
Phnom Penh.
I was in New York when
Cambodia fell to the Khmer Rouge,
in April 1975, two years after America
had stopped bombing Cambodia
and left U.S.-equipped government
soldiers to fend for themselves. I
read about the evacuation of
Schanberg and others from the
French embassy, feared for Dith
Pran’s life and was immensely
relieved when he showed up in
Thailand after four years surviving in
a jungle ruled by the Khmer Rouge.
I wondered, though, what had
happened to Ith Chhun. Stories of
slaughter in the countryside, during
the three years, eight months and 10
days of Khmer Rouge rule, reminded
me of the kidnappings and
executions that peasants had told
Ith Chhun and me were going on in
the early 1970s while scholars were
writing that nothing bad would
happen when the Khmer Rouge
took over in an “agrarian revolt”.
I thought of Ith Chhun
concealing any knowledge of
English, throwing away his glasses,
books and notes, and joining the
peasantry as their new masters
drove them from the cities into the
fields. As a Christian in a Buddhist
society, Ith Chhun would have been
more vulnerable than even the
Buddhist monks whom the Khmer
Rouge killed off as they destroyed
pagodas and shrines.
When I returned, in May 1985,
after covering the 10th anniversary
of “the fall” of Vietnam, I ran into
people in markets, repair shops and
drink stands who remembered me.
Some pointed to scars on their
bodies where they had been bound
and beaten. They all told of the loss
of relatives and friends.
I asked about Ith Chhun,
revisited the palace, heard from
drivers who thought maybe they
had heard about him but weren’t
sure. The last time I was there, six
years ago, no one remembered him.
I wondered if his bones were
among those piled up in “the killing
field” that visitors see outside the
capital – a sampling of all the places
where people were bludgeoned or
strangled by guards to whom
shooting was a waste of bullets.
It was as if he had never existed,
had vanished in a time of killing
when 2 million people like him had
died, their images faded in flickering
memory, nameless and forgotten.
Donald Kirk wrote two books on the
war, Wider War: the Struggle for
Cambodia, Thailand and Laos, and
Tell it to the Dead: Memories of a War.
