Pran, Dith, and Kim DePaul. Children of Cambodia's Killing Fields: Memoirs by Survivors. New Haven: Yale UP, 1997. Hardcover, 192 pp. ISBN: 0-300-06839-5

There is no simple way to describe this book. I can say that this is a work of individual stories combined into a single account, and you might nod your head in feigned understanding. Perhaps I could describe the variety of tales - everything from a four year old's impressions of the Khmer Rouge to a letter written by a survivor to his mother, who died in the fields. I could describe all of this and paint you an incomplete image, for it is impossible to fully understand the text of this book without reading the pages.
So let it suffice to say that this is a book that brings tears with its simple language and fluent writing style. This book is a collection of children's remembrances from the Cambodian genocide, and thus the words might as well be scribed in blood. This is a book of pain and endurance; this is a book of survival. This book does not provide a factual history of the Cambodian genocide. Unlike most historical sources, there are no detailed descriptions of Lon Nol or the Khmer Empire, which fell so many centuries ago. There are no time lines detailing America's rampage of bombs or the evacuations. There are no cold, hard numbers.

There are no photographs of the Tuol Sleng prison or walls filled with nameless faces. There are no pictures of Pol Pot raising his mighty fist as he marches through the towns. The only photographs shown are of the children who survived, and they are not the pitiful, scratchy photos taken in an army war camp or a refugee hospital. They are photographs of how those children look now, in their adult lives.

Too often, history fades into a vague blur of numbers and dates. We remember the names of dictators long after we've forgotten their faces; we remember the legacy of the butcher after the slaughtered have been put to rest. In order to assure the remembrance of the crimes committed against humanity, books like this must be read. They must not be put on silent shelves and buried under dust. Though this book does not gives dates and events as though it were announcing the time of the day, it gives memories to those patient enough to dig for them, and those memories are more precious than any encyclopedia's time line.

So, why bother with a book that won't give you precise facts or definitions? Because this book honors the souls who died and the fortunate who survived; it assures that Pol Pot's atrocities will not be forgotten. Most important, it gives the one who reads the words a vague feeling of empathy; perhaps a shadow of understanding lies in the tales of children who survived the dark years of Cambodia.

The words of Dith Pran echo from the preface of this book. They read as follows:

The dead are crying out for justice. Their voices must be heard. It is the responsibility of the survivors to speak, in order that genocide and holocaust will never again happen in this world. The ghosts of the innocent will be on my mind forever...although you may have seen part of my story in the movie, The Killing Fields, I hope that in this collection of stories you will come to a greater understanding... I hope you will be able to see through the eyes of the Cambodians who lost their childhood on a bright, sunny day in April 1975.

These words are filled with the pain of a country that screamed for help and was, by all rights, ignored. By reading these words and those that follow, we are paying tribute to the dead. When we remind our children that the Nazi Holocaust was not an original historical occurrence, we reinforce the idea that genocide has occurred regularly in our world's history. This advanced education will help ensure the end of holocausts; only by stopping the death will we ever avenge the dead. Dith Pran's introductory words must be heeded; we will never forget the Khmer Rouge killing fields.

Sophiline Cheam Shapiro contributed a memoir that dealt with the songs she and other children were taught to sing as they worked the fields. Sophiline was twelve years old at the time; she worked from sunrise to sunset with two cups of rice soup a day. Looking at the photograph of the adult woman she's grown into, it's difficult to believe that a frightened girl could survive the worst abuse in the history of mankind and live to grow into such a beautiful, graceful woman.

Some of the lyrics of the songs she mentioned include, "We children love Angka limitlessly. Because of you we have better lives and live quite happily." They sang the songs, she said, with beautiful notes and careful voices. They sang to keep their minds of the poisonous snakes hiding in the rice fields and the bombs going off in the ground. They sang to keep their eyes away from their friends and fellow prisoners who were carried off without their limbs. They sang to forget they were dying.

How strong is man that he survives these horrors by singing the very hypocrisy that keeps him chained? How strong is a child that grows up in the blink of an eye and lives to repeat the lyrics of the Khmer Rouge songs?

One of the most heart wrenching details in this book was submitted by Chath Piersath. His photograph shows a joyful man with arms upraised, as if to embrace the sky. He crossed the Thai-Cambodian border in 1979 after four years in the fields; he returned to Cambodia seventeen years later to leave a letter for his mother in the burnt ruin of their home; after taken by the Khmer Rouge, he and his siblings never saw their mother again. Exerpts from the letter include the following:

Waiting is all I can do to lay flowers on your grave, to say goodbye, to embrace you one last time...my eyes, Mother, are much like yours, full of tears. I see you in the distance, limping home, half crippled, on an empty dirt road looking for your children. The Khmer Rouge had taken them away...it has been seventeen years. Forgive me, Mother, for my long absence.

These words brought tears to my eyes at the realization of how many people, how many survivors have no idea if their families are alive or dead; where are they buried? Did they wind up in a mass grave - will the survivors ever place flowers on those precious mounds of earth? How strong can we be when we are given no alternative? How strong can we be when living inside of a nightmare?

It is my belief that the feelings and emotions this book inspired in me do, in fact, serve the very purpose for which this book was intended. We are not always meant to look at history as a pile of dry, dusty facts. Perhaps we are meant to feel something more than a hopelessness when trying to comprehend numbers and memorize dates; perhaps we are meant to feel something more powerful.

That is why this book and others like it are important: so that we can keep history alive through the memories of the dead. When we forget the faces and remember the numbers, it is, perhaps, better to remember nothing at all. Numbers have no human qualities. They do not cry for their mothers and feel the sting of the whip. We must remember the humanity of the victims, and, in doing so, retain some humanity of our own.

Lauren Jones, HGPS 201 Student Spring 1998