Recording
Khmer Oral History Project: Interview with Monoram Hang
Khmer Oral History Project: Interview with Monoram Hang records the life of a man who was a child in Phnom Penh when the Khmer Rouge came to power.[1] It belongs to the Khmer Oral History Project, held by the Minnesota Historical Society.[1]
About the recording
Monoram Hang was nine years old and living in Phnom Penh when the Khmer Rouge came to power. His father, a commander in the army, was killed almost at once, and his mother had given birth only two days before. The family was forced from home to walk about 50 kilometers (about 30 miles) out of the city into the jungle. There they were split up and sent to different work camps.[1] He describes the children's team and the conditions in the camp. In 1984 or 1985 his brother helped him cross into Thailand, where he lived without permission in a refugee camp. He then received medical training, met his American sponsor and came to Minnesota in 1988.[1]
In published excerpts of his account, he recalls losing his parents in the crowd as soldiers drove people from the city.[2] His mobile children's team moved from village to village, staying about a week or at most a month in each. About 100 children slept crowded together in one building, woke at 5 a.m. to work, and after ten hours of labor sat through meetings at night on Communist policies. Children who kept looking for their families were beaten with bamboo sticks.[2] He became a bodyguard to the team leader, who woke him at one or two in the morning to cook. He saw his younger brother beaten with a bamboo stick for trying to eat grasshoppers while working.[2]
The collection
The project grew out of a mock trial of Khmer Rouge leaders held at the Minnesota State Capitol on June 9, 1990, at which members of Minnesota's Khmer community gave testimony as witnesses.[3] It holds 15 interviews with members of Minnesota's Cambodian immigrant community.[4] The narrators speak of the genocide years in Cambodia, refugee camps and emigration to the United States. Each interview has a transcript in English and, where it applies, in Khmer.[3]
Credits
Monoram Hang is the narrator; no interviewer is named for this recording.[1] The project's interviews were recorded in St. Paul, Minnesota, in July and August 1992, and copyright in them is held by Minnesota Advocates for Human Rights.[3]
Access
The interview is cataloged in the Minnesota Historical Society collections search. No item number, access restriction or online recording link is published.[1]