Part 1: Firstborn
My mom’s first daughter, Ah Lee, died years before I was born. I remember writing a story when I was six or seven, about meeting Ah Lee on a magic carpet ride. And for my whole life, I’d always know that there was so much I didn’t know about my family’s past. But I never asked my mom the most basic questions about Ah Lee… or anything else that happened when she fled from war, and then genocide, in Cambodia during the 1970s.
That changed when I gave birth to my first daughter, Acacia. My mom took time off work, without pay, to fly across the country and visit for three weeks, taking care of her first grandchild so I could take care of myself.
Every time I wanted to talk with my mom about her experiences in Cambodia, one of us would find a reason to postpone. But amidst the happy moments and the tense arguments we had during those three weeks, we finally did sit down and turn on a recorder so she could tell me. About her decision to leave home in 1974 when a Khmer Rouge rocket exploded in her family’s home, changing their lives forever. About the rising threats of war across Cambodia that pushed her and my dad to seek refuge near the border between Cambodia and Vietnam. And about how she never stopped thinking about the sister I never knew.
EPISODE CREDITS
Created, written, and produced by Lisa Phu
Edited by Julia Shu
Fact checking by Harsha Nahata and Tiffany Bui
Sound design by James Boo
Original score by Avery Stewart
Additional music by Blue Dot Sessions
Audio engineering by Dave Waldron and Timothy Lou Ly
Cover art and show name created by Christine Carpenter
Audience engagement by Rekha Radhakrishnan
Thanks to Ben Kiernan for participating in the research and reporting process
Thanks to the Alderworks Alaska Writers & Artists Retreat for the residency they provided for this project
This project is supported in part by the Juneau Arts & Humanities Council and the City and Borough of Juneau
Huge thanks and gratitude to Lan Phu and Lynn Hsu
~
“Before Me” is a Self Evident Media production.
The show’s Executive Producers are James Boo, Lisa Phu, and Ken Ikeda.
TRANSCRIPT
Content Warning: This episode includes descriptions of death during war, acts of genocide, and family separation.
Thanks for listening.
~
Lisa: Hi mom.
Lisa: Welcome.
Lan: Ohh. Wow. She’s a very good size. She’s beautiful. Yes. (laughs)
Lan: Oooh. Wooooow.
LISA VO: This was the first time my mom met my daughter, Acacia — five days after she was born.
Lan: Ummm. (giggling)
LISA VO: It was early October 2016, and my mom had just flown from New York to my home in Juneau, Alaska.
Lan: More beautiful than pictures.
Lisa: Isn’t she?
Can you see her?
Lan: Yes.
Scott: Does she look more like me, Lan?
Lan: I think she definitely looks more like you.
LISA VO: I think it’s the case for many grandparents, but my mom would transform with Acacia.
She laughed differently! And she laughed a lot.
I was convinced she was having more fun with Acacia than I was.
Lan: Look at her forehead. Look at that forehead. Everyone says, “That’s her daddy’s forehead!” (laughs)
She’s half and half, yeah.
Lisa: Half and half — isn't she cute, though?
Lan: Yes, she’s cute. She’s adorable…
Lisa: Your first grandkid. First grandkid. …
MUX: Begins
LISA VO: It was amazing to see my mom act this way. But it was also mixed with a lot of stress for me.
My mom is a small woman who might be easily overlooked. But she loves starting up conversations with strangers.
She can be brutally honest with restaurant wait staff, when they ask her how the food is.
And she knows how to make an impression.
SFX — Pages of a journal turn
SFX — A pen puts words to paper
This is what I wrote in my journal after our first full day together:
“Day 1 with Mom makes me feel like it’s going to be a long three weeks, but I also have to remind myself to be appreciative and enjoy the time, and try not to argue with her.”
SFX — Flip of a page in journal
LISA VO: But we had epic fights. Fights where we both shouted and screamed and made each other cry. The kind of fights where you just keep pushing and pushing, wanting to hurt the other.
At one point, I even told her, maybe she should leave a week early, because I knew that would crush her.
This sounds crazy now, but I resented her helping me — telling me to nap when Acacia was sleeping, scolding me for lifting something heavy, offering to fold laundry…
In my everyday life, I do fine without my mom’s help. So I thought, why should this time be any different?
I wasn’t able to accept her assistance happily.
Of course, she was a mother, too. And in the middle of all this, she told me what happened after she gave birth to her first baby, in her home country of Cambodia.
MUX: Ends
Lan: I kind of moved to my mom’s just for a few months so she could take care of me. Because the Chinese tradition — that within 100 days you’re not allowed to — to lift, to do anything, to cook. You know, for women, it’s the only luxurious time.
Only vacation time is when you had a baby. Usually they give you 100 days.
LISA VO: Luxurious? Vacation?
Didn’t she have to get up at all hours of the night?
Lan: Oh yeah, I was breastfeeding, it’s the same thing. The baby is hungry, you had to feed, I change her diapers. I don’t think we had diapers before, We just used the cloth and my mom was the one who had to wash all the cloth, deal with the poops, You know.
She took care of all my laundry by hand, we didn't have a machine then.
That’s a big thing for women. They don’t expect us to do laundry within that hundred days.
And she cooked, you know, she cooked for me.
And the tradition I told you — very spicy pork with a lot of peppercorn, teriyaki style, add a little peppercorn. That’s one way. And another way is pork sliced thin and stir fried with ginger and scallion. We always eat that, pretty much every single day because they believed that, will strengthen the baby’s stomach, you know.
LISA VO: She had tried to tell me about the pork, and I brushed it off as crazy talk.
But it was all important. She had been trying to tell me all along.
MUX begins
This is likely obvious to everyone else, but my mom wasn’t visiting me at one of the hardest times of my life to make it even harder…
She wasn’t offering to help because she thought I couldn’t handle it… or because she thought I was doing it wrong. She wasn’t even there just to help.
She was fulfilling a tradition. This is just what a Chinese mom does. She takes care of her daughter after she gives birth.
This was a revelation to me. And afterward, I started accepting her help, without resentment.
I was able to nap, and appreciate waking up to her cooking in the kitchen. The sounds and smells of someone else making dinner all of a sudden became… miraculous.
It did feel luxurious. And by accepting her help, I was simply fulfilling my role as a Chinese daughter.
I can’t say the rest of the visit was argument-free, but there was a lot more room for patience and understanding.
My whole life, I’ve grown up knowing there was so much I didn’t know about my family’s past. Not just cultural traditions, but things like… what did happen to my mom’s first daughter?
I remember writing a story when I was six or seven about meeting this sister on a magic carpet ride. I’ve always had a narrative about what came before me. But it was something I put together from bits and pieces that I’d overheard.
At various points in my life when I tried writing about it, I always got something wrong.
My mom would issue the corrections and edits after the school essay had been turned in… or the magazine story published — for instance, I didn’t know I was ethnically Chinese until I was 20 years old. Up until then, I thought I was also part Cambodian or Vietnamese, since these were the countries I heard most about growing up.
I never asked my mom the most basic questions.
MUX: ends
But us being in the same location together for three weeks was my opportunity to finally do just that.
(Lots of recorder handling noise)
Lisa: Well, you know, just ask you some questions about your life…
Lan: My life, oh my god, its a long story. (laughs)
MUX: Theme begins
LISA VO: I’m Lisa Phu. And you’re listening to Before Me. The five-part story that follows my mom’s journey from Cambodia to America. And the long overdue conversation that helped us connect over our family’s history.
In the years before my mom had her first child, her life was filled with uncertainty. She lived in Kampot, in the southern part of the country.
When she was a teenager, the Vietnam War was going on next door, seeping into Cambodia. In 1969, the U.S. began bombing Cambodia — in hopes of destroying Vietnamese communist camps and supply bases.
President Richard Nixon: Attacks are being launched this week to clean our major enemy sanctuaries on the Cambodian-Vietnam border.
President Richard Nixon: This is the decision I have made.
At the same time, Cambodia was having its own war, between the Cambodian Republic and a domestic communist group, called the Khmer Rouge.
In the midst of all this, my mom got married. She was 17. My dad, Ky Song, was 26.
Both my mom and dad are Chinese and come from families who immigrated to Cambodia.
After getting married, my mom immediately moved in with his family — and soon after, they had their first child.
Her name was Ah Lee.
MUX: Theme ends
Lan: Your father, he had nothing to do with the baby, he did not wake up at night, he did not know how to change diapers… You know, it’s not part of the man’s responsibility in that Chinese culture.
MUX: Begins
LISA VO: When they had their first kid, my mom and Ky Song still lived in Kampot.
By the way — I didn’t grow up with my dad, so I sometimes refer to him as Ky Song.
He fixed watches and clocks for a living, and my mom ran a small business at the market, selling stuff like candy and laundry detergent.
My parents and Ah Lee lived with Ky Song’s parents and his brother’s family. Ky Song’s brother was Ky Jok. And Ky Jok had six children.
Living with extended family — growing up with grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins — that was the norm.
My mom said Ah Lee was a lovable baby. She even won the affection of Ky Song’s father, who normally didn’t care for girls.
He didn’t like his own daughter, and didn’t pay attention to his other granddaughters.
Lan: However… He likes my daughter very much.
Lisa: Oh.
Lan: Yeah. So he actually come to take a peek at her when she’s asleep and he stared at her and he just loved her. Very unusual.
Lisa: You don’t know why?
Lan: I don’t know why, but she’s easy, she was a very easy baby.
And she is so cute, she is so cute (laughs)
LISA VO: Life was… relatively normal. Normal for wartime, that is.
My mom said bombings had been going on for a few years already. So even though my mom and her family were surrounded by war, it was still manageable.
But that changed. Quickly. By 1974, Cambodia’s civil war had more than doubled in intensity.
The Khmer Rouge had gained control of most of the countryside, and their leader, Pol Pot, was terrorizing the cities, including where my family lived.
MUX: Ends
It was becoming more and more apparent — that in order to stay safe, they’d have to leave.
Lan: We were sitting in the living room talking, discussing when we’re going to escape, when we’re going to leave the house, and then a bomb dropped on the street.
And a thousand fragments went into the house, and one fragment just came right here, right here.
MUX: Begins
LISA VO: A piece of shrapnel landed right next to my mom.
Lan: When we heard the bomb, we all leaned down to the floor.
I was with your sister, holding your sister, leaning down and all of a sudden I feel wet, I get wet and then I smell blood —
I knew somebody died…
LISA VO: Ah Lee was alright. But the shrapnel had hit Ky Jok, my dad’s brother… through the temple.
Lan: Oh my god. All the brains, all the blood, just… the whole entire body’s blood came through here, soaked the living room.
And of course we all sobbed, and we, you know, there’s a death in the house, now everybody take it serious.
After we did his funeral, then that was the time we decided to take the whole family, leave, leave the land.
LISA VO: What killed Ky Jok — my mom’s brother-in-law, my uncle — was a Khmer Rouge rocket.
MUX: Fades out
The Khmer Rouge were using rockets more and more in the early to mid 70s. They would fire the rockets into the city without having a specific target, and the shrapnel could kill and injure people. The number of casualties per rocket was small, but it caused terror and chaos.
MUX: Begins
LISA VO: After my uncle was killed, my mom, Ah Lee, Ky Song, and his parents left their home in Kampot, took a boat and fled toward the Vietnam border.
Lan: When we lived in the border we did not have a house, we lived with someone we know, and the water was filthy, everything was filthy…
Nasty living. Very, very, very bad.
Then the grandfather, Ky Song’s father…
He's old and he’s so used to his own place. He said, “You know what? I cannot live in a place like this, it’s too complicated.”
So he insisted to go back.
So grandmother said, “You know what, I’m going to bring your little one back home.”
LISA VO: At that point, they’d been living along the border for a few months. My mom says violence in Kampot had quieted down.
So my dad’s parents took Ah Lee back home — while my parents got their bearings at the border.
Lan: At that time, nobody know what the future would bring, and nobody know what the road in front of us is. Was so misty. Nobody know.
And we came to the Cambodia border, just for temporary, that was the plan, until stop bombing
They still bomb, but — Kampot was… was a little safer.
LISA VO: After my grandparents and Ah Lee left, my mom and dad moved into a different house, which they converted into a business during the day, and sold clothes out of.
Ky Song went back and forth to Kampot a couple of times. To bring my grandparents money and baby formula.
My mom made the journey once — to help out, and spend time with Ah Lee.
MUX: Ends
Lisa: Do you remember what she was wearing when you last saw her?
Lan: Yeah, she was wearing — let me try to remember, what she wearing…
The favorite color I gave her, a little pinkish. A pinkish shirt (starts to cry)
Yeah. Yeah, she’s so cute. You know, when I went out, she always sit in the door — a year and a half — she sit in the door and wait for me to come home.
So sad.
Too bad grandfather, grandmother did not want to stay with us.
Grandfather was very difficult, otherwise… Otherwise, we would've had them stay, you know, but they didn't want to stay.
But where we are it wasn't safe either.
It’s the Cambodia border, that’s where the Khmer Rouge lived. They could come by bicycle, they can slaughter everybody, you know?
LISA VO: You can probably hear that my mom’s trying to explain why they made the decisions they did. Why they let Ky Song’s parents take Ah Lee.
But you have to realize, there was no right or wrong thing to do — there was no playbook for war.
My parents remained in that house for as long as they could.
Lan: The reason we, we stayed there, because we were hoping to see your sister. We were hoping she would come someday.
We were hoping that somebody would take her out, somebody would bring Grandmother and her out. Every single day. Every single day, we were hoping to see her.
LISA VO: The plan was for everybody to be together again eventually. But my mom and dad were forced to leave the border.
During one of Ky Song’s visits to Kampot, Khmer Rouge soldiers came to their area. My mom was all alone and she heard gunshots. She called it a slaughtering.
Lan: They know you’re not part of them. They just shot people gun, and… they kill people.
Even if you’re civilian, so what, they just kill you because they know you’re not one of them.
And they also want territory. You know, they kill you so you get scared, so you leave.
Your father wasn’t with me but, oh my God…
Now I had to take myself and whatever I can take on bicycle, and I move myself toward Vietnam.
He was lucky, somehow. He took the boat and then get himself to Vietnam. And that was the end of our residence, our business at that border.
LISA VO: Once my parents settled in Vietnam, they tried to go back to Kampot — to get Ah Lee, and Ky Song’s parents, and bring them over the border.
Lan: But you know what? Things happen so fast, boom boom boom, the border was blockaded.
We could not go back.
Could not go back, and the next thing you know, the Khmer Rouge gathered all the people who remained in the city and force you in the countrysides — you heard about it, right — and turn everybody… turn them into farmers.
MUX: Begins
LISA VO: What my mom is referring to is April 17, 1975. When the Khmer Rouge took over Phnom Penh, and started evacuating all the cities. The regime had won the civil war and would rule over Cambodia for four years.
The goal of Pol Pot, the leader of the Khmer Rouge, was to institute the ultimate totalitarian system, enforced by violence and mass killing.
Historians and researchers estimate that they killed between 1.7 and 3 million people. Or close to a quarter of the country’s population.
The idea was to develop Cambodia on an agricultural base.
The Khmer Rouge forced people from the cities into the countryside, and into labor camps, where they died of starvation and illness.
Others were brutally murdered.
As these evacuations were taking place in 1975, my dad’s parents left Kampot, and walked to the town of Tuk Meas, where my grandmother is originally from.
They were still taking care of Ah Lee, along with my grandmother’s relatives.
Then my grandmother got really sick.
Lan: So she know, she knows she's going to die.
So she, uh, give your sister, she hand your sister to her nephew and wife.
The couple did not have children. And she said, “You know what, I give you Ky Song’s daughter. Please take care of her’ (starts to cry)
‘One day…’ She said, ‘Take care of her, one day when you see the parents, you give her back to her parents.’
LISA VO: My dad’s cousins cared for Ah Lee for more than three years. And my mom says they loved her.
But one day, Khmer Rouge soldiers came to their house, with a list. On the list were the couple’s parents — who’d been landlords.
The couple themselves were not on the list. Neither was Ah Lee.
City people, educated people, former business people — they were all being targeted by the Khmer Rouge as traitors. But the soldiers said the people on the list would simply be relocated.
My mom told me about all of this while holding my daughter, Acacia, in her arms.
MUX: Ends
Lan: So the couple who had your sister, say
‘Oh, the parents are over there now, ‘We have to go where they’re going, we’d like to go with them.’ He didn't know.
So he decided to go with them, they add them on the list and your sister also on the list, and then they killed them all. (starts to cry)
They killed them all, they shot them.
She was seven years old, and people who came out who knew her, who lived with her, they said she was the nicest little girl. So sad.
Took me so long to be able to repeat the story. (sighs)
[Moment of Silence]
MUX: Begins
LISA VO: When Vietnamese soldiers defeated the Khmer Rouge in January 1979, many who survived left Cambodia as soon as they could. My mom says people who had known Ah Lee found my mom in Vietnam, to tell her what happened.
Up until then, my mom had always held onto hope — that she’d see her firstborn again.
When I was twenty, my mom and I went to Paris and visited relatives who lived there. I remember walking around the Eiffel Tower.
My mom was speaking to one of our relatives, in a language I didn’t understand — besides English, my mom speaks at least five other languages.
So at one point, she turned to me and said, “He knew your oldest sister and says she was very kind. You would’ve liked her.”
She said this casually. And then started talking to our relative again. I didn’t ask her to tell me more.
So much of my life was like this — hearing small snippets of a long, complicated story.
But now I know who that man was.
He was one of my dad’s cousins. His brother was the one who took Ah Lee in.
MUX: Ends
Lan: I probably questioned him a bit about what he knew.
But he and his parents separate too.
So they weren’t together, he didn’t know that much. All he knew is they were killed, and, you know, all he knew, his brother adopted my, my daughter, and they were killed together.
Lisa: He had met her, though, so what did he say about her?
Lan: ‘She’s so cute, awww, she’s — she is so adorable… Even him misses her too.
You know, Ah Lee has a very good nature. When a kid has a good nature, people like them.
Lisa: Do you think about her often?
Lan: Of course. Of course I think of her often.
I think of Ah Lee a lot..
You know, life move on, but I still think of her.
You never… you never forget your baby. Never.
~
Credits
LISA VO: On the next episode of BEFORE ME, my mom recounts the harrowing years she spent fleeing the Khmer Rouge.
Lan: Ky Song quickly told me to bring the baby and hide under the bed, don’t get out no matter what.
LISA VO: This episode was written and produced by me.
Our editor is Julia Shu. Fact check by Harsha Nahata and Tiffany Bui.
Production management and sound design by James Boo. And additional help from Cathy Erway.
Original theme music by Avery Stewart. Audio engineering by Dave Waldron and Timothy Lou Ly.
Thanks to Ben Kiernan, for speaking with me about the historical context of what my family experienced.
And of course — special thanks to my mom.
If you want to record an oral history interview with someone you love — even if you’ve never tried it before — check out self evident show dot com slash history, where you’ll find a free toolkit to help you take the next step.
Before Me is a Self Evident Media production. Our executive producers are James Boo, Ken Ikeda, and me.
The show also received support from the Alderworks Alaska Writers and Artists Retreat and the Juneau Arts and Humanities Council.
I’m Lisa Phu. Thanks for listening.
