Hollister shop owner escapes Cambodian genocide in the 1970s
Nawuth Keat was in the third grade when the Khmer Rouge invaded
his family’s village.
”
When I was young, I live in Cambodia,
”
Keat said.
”
All I see is war all the time.
”
Hollister shop owner escapes Cambodian genocide in the 1970s
Nawuth Keat was in the third grade when the Khmer Rouge invaded his family’s village.
“When I was young, I live in Cambodia,” Keat said. “All I see is war all the time.”
Keat is an unassuming man who works seven days a week. He and his wife, Kelly, own Java Bagel on San Benito Street in Hollister. He helps his wife at the shop every day and works full-time as a machinist in Fremont.
Keat and Kelly have three children; two sons, 18 and 16, and a 13-year-old daughter.
He does not mind his schedule because he keeps what he earns.
“I used to work all day, all night, for food only,” he said. “Nobody had shoes. You’re lucky if you have shoes though.”
Khmer Rouge is the name associated with a violent political faction in Cambodia, according to a Web site from Yale University. Aided by North Vietnamese and Viet Cong soldiers, the Khmer Rouge grew from about 3,000 troops in 1970 to more than 30,000 in 1973, according to the Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia.
The exact dates are hard for Keat to remember.
Some time in 1973 Khmer Rouge invaded his village.
“They shot around our village,” Keat said.
His mother gathered her five young children and their babysitter.
“We try to run, escape from them,” Keat said, “to hide somewhere.”
They ran to his grandmother’s house.
Across the street from his grandmother’s house there was a well hidden by a field of bamboo. The well was not very deep, but it went dry during the summer. Nine members of Keat’s family, and the babysitter, all hid inside.
There was no time to devise a cover for the well.
“You can hear the shooting,” Keat said.
When soldiers invaded the property they set fire to an old barn. By the light of the burning barn they discovered his family’s hiding place.
The only man inside the well was Keat’s uncle. He climbed out of the well and put his hands up.
The soldiers asked him for guns. They needed guns to fight the Cambodian government, Keat said. The family did not own any.
“A few seconds later they shot him in the chest,” Keat said. “I saw it and his blood spray all over the place.”
Keat was 9 years old.
His grandmother begged the two soldiers for their lives.
“She keep begging, ‘don’t shoot us,'” Keat said. “And they start shooting.”
About five minutes later it was quiet.
Keat’s toddler brother started crying. The soldiers checked to see if anyone else was still alive.
“My body is soaked with blood,” Keat said. “I just pretend I’m dead, and they walk away.”
When the men were gone, Keat went to check on his family.
“I checked my mom, and I know she dead,” Keat said.
His 8-month-old sister died at his mother’s chest.
“Her whole cheek was blown out,” Keat said.
When Keat talks about his mother, he said, “it’s a bad memory that I have there.”
“I hate this story,” he said. “Everyday go by, I never think about it. It a lot easier.”
He wants a better life for his own children.
“I want them to be good in school,” Keat says. “The bagel shop not that busy, so I can handle it.”
That their children receive a good education is Keat and his wife Kelly’s highest priority.
“As long as you do good in school, you’re fine,” Kelly said. “I want them to have a good job.”
They want their children’s lives to be easier than theirs, she said. They want their children to work five days a week, not seven.
“It’s not that easy for us,” she said.
Still, it pales compared to what Keat went through as a child.
Keat’s father hid as he watched his wife and children killed.
His father did not throw a grenade that would have killed the men. He had heard his son cry.
Keat got shot three times that night, twice in the elbow and once in his hip. The bullet to his hip barely missed his bladder.
“Doctor say only half inch, I would have died,” Keat said.
At the hospital, the doctors stitched his wounds without painkillers.
“My pain is so great, I scream until I pass out,” he said.
The only place on his body without blood were his eyes.
For the next two years Keat lived with his sister in the city.
In 1975, the Khmer Rouge defeated the ruling party of Cambodia, the Khmer Republic of General Lon Nol, and established the state of Democratic Kampuchea, according to Yale University.
When the Khmer Rouge took over, they kicked everyone out of the cities. Keat’s father took his family back to their village.
The violent regime ran the city. People were separated into groups based on age. The groups were forced to work from sunrise to sunset growing crops.
“Otherwise, you don’t get no food,” Keat said.
In the village, Keat lived with his older sister, her husband, and his two brothers.
His father hid in the jungle because a member of the Khmer Rouge wanted to kill him.
“My dad, he hide. My mother is gone,” Keat said.
His father hid in the jungle for three years. When they found him, they brought him to the village.
“I believe he knew that they were going to kill him,” Keat said. “But that was the last time I saw him, and he never say a word to me.”
His father could have run away, but the families of people who had done that were often killed.
“He sacrificed himself to save his kids,” Keat said. “After that we struggle some more. I have no hope to live.”
Today, Keat rents a three-bedroom apartment in Hollister where he lives with his wife and daughter.
Of his children, Keat said, “I’m always working. I don’t have time to see them.”
Keat’s weekdays start at 7 a.m. and go until 2 a.m. After he takes the kids to school, he helps in the bagel shop for several hours. He tries to nap for a few hours in the afternoon before he heads out to Fremont to start his job as a machinist. On weekends, he works in the shop from opening to closing.
But he has enough to eat.
In the villages, everyone worked all day, even in 100 degree heat or heavy rain. The amount of food workers got to eat varied by village. Food was rationed by the village leader.
“Only thing worth, was rice,” Keat said.
Money was just paper. There was nothing to buy.
People were supposed to eat communally, Keat said.
During the summer, when food was plentiful, they were given one bowl of rice a day. During the winter, when there was less food, they were given one bowl of soup a day.
“It is not enough for your body,” Keat said. “You have to find something outside to eat.”
The punishment for finding food in the jungle was death.
By the winter of 1976, people were starving. Parents watched their children die
“People get skinny,” he said. “I can see people die everywhere.”
Keat found food for his family.
“When you don’t have nothing to eat, you get what you can,” Keat said. “I find all kinds of stuff to support my family.”
In the jungle he found snakes, rats, and frogs. He fished and picked wild mushrooms.
“Each year, people die more,” Keat said. “People don’t know that when you hungry, you can’t sleep.”
Keat learned to steal food that the Khmer Rouge stockpiled. He was good at it. He is quick to point out that he no longer steals. He stole because he had to.
Kelly describes her husband as nice, hardworking, and a good dad.
“I don’t know,” she said. “He just nice. A lot of patience, easygoing. He can talk things out better than me if we have a problem.”
She never has to remind him to do household chores.
“Well, my mom always tell me I’m lucky,” Kelly said.
Kelly said she knows that she’s lucky.
“I’m really proud of him,” she said. “My husband, he have a softer heart than I do.”
Still, they both went through hard times.
On Dec. 25, 1978, the Vietnamese invaded Cambodia.
The Khmer Rouge had been fighting with the Vietnamese along the border for several years. The regime wanted to take back from Vietnam territory that had been lost to Cambodia due to Vietnamese expansion.
Two weeks later, the Vietnamese army entered the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh and declared the end of Khmer Regime.
The Vietnamese army entered Keat’s village that year. They pushed the Khmer Rouge into the jungle. About 100 people, including Keat’s family, fled the village for a Vietnamese-controlled city.
They walked all night following a light that was off in the distance. They had only moonlight to see by. Keat had no shoes.
“By that time, we so poor, we don’t have nothing,” he said.
The Khmer Rouge killed many Cambodians on that trail, but Keat and his family made it to their destination. They stayed until 1980.
Although the Khmer Rouge would kill people who tried to escape the country, Keat’s brother-in-law wanted to leave. He hired a smuggler to take them across the border.
Keat lived in a refugee camp for three months. His sister paid a woman in the refugee camp $200 to take Keat with her out of the country.
Keat knew nothing about the United States back then. The only country he knew outside of Cambodia was France, which had colonized the nation.
Keat moved to Salem, Ore. with the woman. He was 14 years old.
Even in the United States, he had a hard time. The family he lived with treated him as a servant. Although he worked, they would not allow him to send any money to his family in the refugee camp. The last straw was when he found his social security card crumpled in the trash.
Keat ran away from the family with no money, few clothes and no shoes. He did not speak English.
He remembered he had a distant relative, a great aunt, in Oregon City. When Keat called her, she picked him up.
While living with his aunt, he took ESL classes at a local community college. A teacher encouraged him to go to high school. She helped him apply. Though he spoke no English, he enrolled as a sophomore.
He was 17.
A year after he started high school his aunt moved to Connecticut. She asked Keat to move with her, but he wanted to finish his education.
“I live by myself in my own apartment,” Keat said.
He worked and attended high school full time. In three years he had enough credits to graduate high school.
“I graduated high school with a 3.75 [GPA],” Keat said.
A college in Oregon offered him a scholarship to attend, but he turned it down. Instead, he married his high school sweetheart, Kelly, right after high school.
“I know an education good,” Keat said, but it is hard being on your own with no support, “just working, working, working.”
He had no family in America except for his great aunt. His sister and brother-in-law were living in France. His two brothers were in Cambodia.
Two of his brothers moved to the United States recently. One of his brothers lives in Hollister. He works at the shop at night making bagels.
“It took 10 years to hear they could come,” said Keat, “and two for paperwork.”
Working all the time just to pay the bills, Keat still does not have what most Americans would call an easy life.
Still, he is content.
“I’m happy with myself right now,” Keat said. “It’s good right now. I never get sick or stressed out.”
