Creator
Pin Yathay
Cambodian engineer and author of the Khmer Rouge survival memoir Stay Alive, My Son.
Pin Yathay is a Cambodian engineer and author whose memoir Stay Alive, My Son (1987) tells of his survival under the Khmer Rouge.[1][2] The book covers the 27 months between the Khmer Rouge arrival in Phnom Penh and his escape into Thailand, and it has been translated into twelve languages.[3][1]
Early career
Pin Yathay was born in Oudong, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) north of Phnom Penh.[4] At Sisowath High School he won Cambodia's national mathematics competition, and a government scholarship took him to Canada to study civil engineering at Polytechnique Montréal.[1][4] Back in Cambodia he became Director of Public Works.[1] Before 1975 he headed the New Projects and Equipment Department at the Ministry of Public Works.[5]
Under the Khmer Rouge
He was in Phnom Penh on April 17, 1975, when the Khmer Rouge took the city. He spent that night at Ounalom Pagoda, and the next day soldiers ordered the people sheltering there to leave Phnom Penh, saying the Americans would bomb it and they would be gone for only three days.[6][7] As an educated man he was persecuted as a bourgeois and sent to work the land without pay.[4] He lived for about three months each in Kandal and Takeo provinces, and in about September 1975 he was taken by truck toward Battambang and left at Veal Vong, a forest on the Kravanh Mountains.[7] There people cleared forest and built their own shelters on shrinking rice rations, and about one third of the people in the camp died.[6][7] He survived by trading clothing for food and rice.[7]
His account covers more than 26 months of forced labor, famine, deportation and loss. Of the eighteen people deported with him from Phnom Penh in 1975, he was the only one to survive.[4] When his education was revealed, he escaped on foot across the mountains into Thailand, a journey of two months.[4][5] He reached Thailand on October 22, 1977, was held for a week and was granted refugee status. Another account dates his arrival at a refugee camp in Thailand to June 1977.[5][8] In the camp, journalists interviewed him daily, and he wrote down answers to the questions they asked most so that he would not forget details.[8]
Later career
After leaving Cambodia, he worked as a project engineer in France, then with the Asian Development Bank in Manila and the French Development Agency in Paris.[5] He gave public talks in Europe, Canada and the United States about what Cambodia suffered under the Khmer Rouge.[5] At a 1978 talk at the École Polytechnique de Montréal, a demonstration was organized against him.[8] He lives in France.[9]
On February 7, 2013, he testified as a civil party in Case 002/01 before the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge Tribunal, against Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan.[7][8][10] The court relied on his testimony in finding that former civil servants and their families were screened for their class and past jobs.[7] At the end of his testimony, he called on former Khmer Rouge leaders to examine their actions and apologize to the Cambodian people.[8] He supports the tribunal but has criticized its length, its cost and the small number of accused.[8]
Books
His first book, L'Utopie meurtrière: Un rescapé du génocide cambodgien témoigne, was published by Robert Laffont in 1979.[4] Stay Alive, My Son was first published in English in 1987 by Cornell University Press, and Touchstone published an edition on October 15, 1988.[5][3] Its French edition is Tu vivras, mon fils, written with John Man.[4] Khmer Times called it the first memoir by a Khmer Rouge survivor and an early formal testimony against the regime. The historian David Chandler has said that Pin Yathay's mature professional view let him judge the Khmer Rouge in ways younger memoirists could not.[5]
The Khmer-language edition did not reach Cambodia until 2003.[5][8] Demand led to new printings in 2006 and 2009.[5] The book became a bestseller, and its English edition reached an eighth printing.[2]
Virtual reality adaptation
Filmmaker Victoria Bousis found Stay Alive, My Son in a bookstore near Angkor Wat in 2013, and she met Pin Yathay in Paris in 2017 to discuss adapting it.[1] Her company, UME Studios, produced the virtual reality work Stay Alive, My Son, which uses volumetric capture of Pin Yathay and lets players retrace paths from his escape.[1][2] It won the Producers Guild Innovation Award and has been shown in more than 28 countries.[1] In 2025 it was presented at the Bophana Center in Phnom Penh in the program "1975–2025: From Darkness to Light in Cambodia's Story," and a non-VR version was set for global release on April 17, 2025. A permanent installation is planned for the resource center of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia.[1]
Works
- Stay Alive, My Son (Book)
See also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 Cambodianess, Virtual reality brings Pin Yathay's acclaimed memoir to digital life (April 20, 2025)
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Khmer Times, This man's search for his child in reality is not a game
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Simon & Schuster, Stay Alive, My Son
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 Pin Yathay, Wikipédia (French)
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6 5.7 5.8 Khmer Times, A memoir to a son
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 Cambodia Tribunal Monitor, Civil party tells of "unimaginable harm" during Democratic Kampuchea (February 7, 2013)
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 7.5 Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, witness profile: Pin Yathay
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 8.5 8.6 Le Petit Journal, Tu vivras mon fils, rencontre avec un survivant du régime khmer rouge (March 10, 2020)
- ↑ XRMust, Interview with Victoria Bousis (Stay Alive, My Son) (June 21, 2024)
- ↑ Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, trial transcript E1/170.1 (February 7, 2013)