Collection

Cambodian American 1.5 Generation Oral History Project

The Cambodian American 1.5 Generation Oral History Project (CAOH) is a set of 15 oral histories with Cambodian Americans who were children under the Khmer Rouge.[1] Pacific Asian Counseling Services (PACS) recorded them, and they are kept at the Historical Society of Long Beach.[1]

History

Cambodia Town first developed the idea, and PACS carried it out to bring in a mental health perspective. The Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health funded the work under the Mental Health Services Act (MHSA), as one of the Asian Pacific Islander Underserved Cultural Communities (API UsCC) capacity building projects.[1][2] The 1.5 generation was chosen on purpose, to fill a gap in mental health services, and the project notes that this age group had been largely overlooked in earlier oral history work.[1][3]

The county awarded the project to PACS on March 23, 2022, and work began in April 2022 with an executive team.[4] Mariko Kahn was project coordinator, Robert Carleton of Akara Films was videographer, Dr. Susan Needham was academic researcher and Sithea San was community advisor and translator.[4][3] Akara Films recorded all of the interviews, translated and subtitled those in Khmer, and made the transcripts and a summary video.[4]

The project first defined the 1.5 generation as children born in Cambodia between 1963 and 1969 who came to the United States between 1980 and 1986.[3] Few people applied at first, so the team dropped the birth-year rule and accepted people who arrived between 1976 and 1987 at ages six to 17. Birth records among Cambodian refugees can be unreliable, so the team accepted the age each narrator used.[4] Outreach began in October 2022 through press releases, a local newspaper advertisement, social media, community leaders and Cambodian organizations. The team found that community members asking family, friends and colleagues worked best.[4]

Registration ran until February 2023. The first interview was recorded on February 5, 2023, and the last on April 23, 2023. Two applicants withdrew in April, leaving 15 completed oral histories.[4] The final project reports were finished on August 15, 2023.[4]

Recording

Dr. Karen Quintiliani, Suzanne Im and Tola Livesey conducted the interviews in the Long Beach area.[3][1] Most were in English, and a narrator could ask to speak in Khmer; two did. Each narrator chose where to be filmed, and each had an interview before and after the recording.[4] Sessions took place on Saturdays, Sundays and Mondays so that people with full-time jobs could take part. They lasted about three hours on average, and a few narrators asked for family members to join at the end.[4] Kahn, a licensed marriage and family therapist, attended every session and could give mental health support when needed.[4]

Rough transcripts were made with AI software and then checked by a transcriber. The two Khmer interviews were translated into English and checked by a second Cambodian reader.[4]

Material coverage

The narrators speak of childhood before and after the Khmer Rouge, what they lost, the journey to the United States and building lives in America.[1] The project also set out to learn what helped them survive, including how they coped with emigration and how trauma affected their well-being. It presents the accounts as a message of hope for future generations.[1] The narrators also shared photographs of their lives, sometimes more than 30 each, and these were scanned and archived with the interviews.[3][4]

The 15 narrators are Julie Sopia Daniels, Dan Durke, Rom Hoy, Bokanika Kan, Danielle Khim, Sophy Khut, Dr. Christina Lee, Kam Lou Lopez, Monorom Neth, Sara Socheata Pol-Lim, Namoch Sokhom, Bonavy Som, Clark Tang, Janet Panhchakrong Vanniroth and Sithy Yi.[3]

In surveys taken before and after the recordings, the project found that 88.9 percent of narrators said talking about the past was helpful to them and their families, and 80 percent said they had discussed things they had never told anyone.[4]

Exhibition

On June 10, 2023, the team held a two-hour community presentation at the Historical Society of Long Beach, with a 20-minute summary video and questions for the narrators.[4] About 90 people came, among them 10 of the narrators and Long Beach City Councilmember Suely Saro.[4] The historical society opened an exhibition of the project in 2023.[5] It included photographs by Colin Grafton, a British photographer who worked in Cambodia from 1972 to 1975 and in the Thai refugee camps.[3]

Catalog and access

The oral histories are archived by the Cambodian Community History and Archive Project (CamCHAP) and housed at the Historical Society of Long Beach.[1] Access is by online registration with CamCHAP.[3]

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 Historical Society of Long Beach, Oral Histories
  2. ↑ UC Berkeley Library, Southeast Asian Diasporas: Oral Histories
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7 Historical Society of Long Beach, The Cambodian American 1.5 Generation Oral History Project and Colin Grafton Border Camp Photographs
  4. ↑ 4.00 4.01 4.02 4.03 4.04 4.05 4.06 4.07 4.08 4.09 4.10 4.11 4.12 4.13 4.14 Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health, Cambodian American: Oral History of the 1.5 Generation, final summary (2023)
  5. ↑ USC Center for Health Journalism, Cambodian/Khmer Genocide Survivors Heal Through Storytelling (December 9, 2024)
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This page was last edited on 26 September 2026, at 23:32.