Nawuth Keat will be the first one to admit his early life
growing up in Cambodia wasn’t easy.
”
It was really hard,
”
he said.
”
Because all the bad things that happened in your life
– you don’t want to remember.
”
The word
”
hard
”
is the easiest way for the now 46-year-old Keat to describe
losing both parents to gunfire, being shot three times himself, and
spending most of his young life shuffling from farm to farm in
Cambodia and eventually Thailand before fleeing to the United
States.
Nawuth Keat will be the first one to admit his early life growing up in Cambodia wasn’t easy.
“It was really hard,” he said. “Because all the bad things that happened in your life – you don’t want to remember.”
The word “hard” is the easiest way for the now 46-year-old Keat to describe losing both parents to gunfire, being shot three times himself, and spending most of his young life shuffling from farm to farm in Cambodia and eventually Thailand before fleeing to the United States.
Today, Hollister resident Keat is far removed from his life in a genocidal Cambodia that was under the rule of the Khmer Rouge. But the memories are always there, and with his recently published book “Alive in the Killing Fields: Surviving the Khmer Rouge Genocide”, Keat tells his story.
“All the things that happened to me are in my heart, and when I remember, they hurt my heart,” Keat said clutching his chest. “And that’s why I don’t talk too much about stuff like that. Nobody wants to.”
Khmer Rouge was a communist government party that controlled Cambodia from 1975 to 1979. During that time, its leader Pol Pot implemented agricultural reform and insisted on self-sufficiency, leading to the death of millions of Cambodians. The communist Khmer Rouge believed in an agricultural driven country, pushing habitants to become farm workers and feeding them little food.
Before the Khmer Rouge, Keat’s family was extremely successful, thanks to his hard-working father, who was a rice farmer. And their success may have been their downfall once the Khmer Rouge started to seek control, he writes in the book.
“But whether a family was singled out or not, no one was safe,” reads the book.
See the full story in the Free Lance.
Buying the book
To buy a copy of the book, go to Amazon.com. The listed cover price is $15.95, but it can be bought new for $12.44 on the site.
Excerpt from “Killing Fields”
“A Khmer Rouge ran to the ditch where we were huddled. My grandmother begged, ‘Take our gold and money. Please just leave us alone.’
Then my uncle stood up. The Khmer Rouge demanded, ‘Where’s the gun you bought last week?’
My uncle told him the truth, ‘I didn’t buy any gun.’
The Khmer Rouge raised his M-16 rifle and shot my uncle in the chest. Fired from that close range, the bullet careened through my uncle’s body, and blood spewed out behind him. He fell to the ground.
My grandmother screamed. ‘Don’t kill us,’ she begged. The killer sprayed her with bullets, and the rest of my family, too.”
