Loung Ung

Loung Ung is a Cambodian American human rights activist, public speaker, and award winning author. Some of her work includes participating in organizations which aim to end violence directed towards women, end the exploitation of children as soldiers, and end the use of landmines around the world. Her written works are memoirs of her life which are comprised of First They Killed My Father, Lucky Child, and Lulu in the Sky. She has since expanded her writing onto the big screen by writing for the movie Girl Rising in 2013. The first of her memoirs has also been adapted into film by Netflix for which she was a co-screenplay writer. This page focuses on the life of Loung Ung as told through her memoir First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers.

Through the use of google maps, we have put together an approximation of the journey Loung Ung undertook through Cambodia, Vietnam, and Thailand during the Cambodian Genocide, as depicted in her book First They Killed My Father. Her story begins in the capital city of Cambodia, Phnom Penh, in 1975 when the Khmer Rouge gained control of the country. Loung Ung and her family were forcibly evacuated from the city along with the rest of its inhabitants. From there the family set out to find what ever safety they could throughout the war torn nation. Her father was a military police officer of the previous government, putting a deadly target on their backs.

When they thought they had found a home in the village of Krang Truop with their uncle, someone who might recognize and out them moved in. This caused the Ung family to move to Village of Ro Leap for safety. It is here and in the surrounding region that numerous members of the Ung family would die, including Loung's mother and father.

After the death of her father, Loung was sent by her mother to live at an orphanage camp under a new name. After being deemed a hard worker, she was sent to a training camp for child soldiers in Siem Reap. During this time, Vietnam had begun to invade Cambodia, and the Khmer Rouge were desperate for fighters to fight them off. Loung was supposed to be one of those fighters. Luckily, under the chaos of an attack, Loung made her escape and reunited with her remaining siblings.

From Pursat City, Loung and her siblings were able to find their uncle outside Phnom Penh. It was decided that Loung and her brother Meng would attempt to immigrate to America so that they may earn enough to support the other family members. Meng and Loung traveled by river boat to Saigon, Vietnam from Phnom Penh. They then traveled by boat again from Vietnam to Thailand where they lived in a refugee camp until a sponsor could fund their immigration to America. The book ends when she boarded her flight from Bangkok International Airport to the United States.

From our archival collections at UCI we have selected a number of materials that are connected to Loung Ung's story. Pictured above is the cover page of a Cambodian-English glossary from the Rosenblatt (Lionel) collection on the Interagency Task Force for Indochina Refugees. Below we have a couple of pages from the glossary with translations of words we deemed fitting to her story.

These images depicting the inside of this glossary show translations of words we believe to be important due to their commonality in Loung Ung's story and the Cambodian Genocide. This includes communist, family, children, the Khmer, enlisted man, heritage, to force out, orphaned, anger, firearm, poverty, to have a fever, and others.

In the first photo pictured above we see a number of Cambodian women caught candidly smiling while performing Cambodian dance. The second photo depicts a Cambodian or Vietnamese woman holding an infant in her arms. The third photo shows American military police officers helping refugee children off their plane. These first three photos were all taken at Fort Chaffee refugee camp in Arkansas, USA. The last three photos depict armed soldiers; they are likely guards for Khao-I-Dang, a Thai refugee camp setup for Cambodians.

Although we highly recommend reading Loung Ung's book First They Killed My Father, we understand that sitting down to read is not always possible during a busy day. Luckily the story of Loung Ung is of such high critical acclaim that it is available to us through multiple media formats. Above we have embedded the trailer to the book's film adaptation which is available on Netflix as well as a Q&A interview with Loung Ung and Angelina Jolie about the movie. We encourage you to watch the film adaptation or listen to the audiobook version of First They Killed My Father to learn more.