There’s been a lot of attention on the diasporas of Vietnamese refugees who came in the 1970s fleeing communism, but there’s also another Indochina group that appeared in Santa Ana in the 1980s–Cambodians fleeing the Communist regime of the Khmer Rouge.
The Communist takeover killed upwards of two million Cambodians.
Many families were separated, never to see each other again, while some died of disease, starvation, or execution.
After the fall of the Cambodian Communist movement, led by dictator Pol Pot, from 1975 to 1979, hundreds of thousands of refugees were resettled in the U.S.
Some refugees found a new home in the apartments along Minnie Street in Santa Ana in the 1980s, where Latinos and Cambodians lived side by side.
The neighborhood looked different– it was known as one of the poorest neighborhoods in Santa Ana, dealing with gang violence, poverty, and drug use.
“When I first heard my first gunshots [in the neighborhood], I didn’t know if I had come back to Cambodia,” said Kieng Seng, a Cambodian refugee who arrived to the neighborhood in 1983, who remembers the gang violence she witnessed when she arrived.
Seng, who is a senior case manager with the Cambodian Family, a grassroots organization that started in the 1980s by Cambodian refugees on Minnie Street.
“When I was 12, I didn’t understand why I was being taken away [by the Communists], my parents did everything for me, so when I was taken away, I didn’t have no extra clothes to change after working, no toothbrush, lot’s of mosquitos [in the rice fields], I still remember the feeling of the bumps on my skin of the bites, and the lice, there was nothing no shampoo–no nothing,” said Seng.
“I still dream every so often where I have the feeling I am going to die.”
When Seng was taken by Communist forces as a child, she recalls the soldiers were “nice” and it felt like an exciting trip to leave with them–something she realized later in life was a deceitful tactic.
It wasn’t until she turned 18 that she started to piece together and reflect on her experience.
“I thought, why am I still alive?” said Seng, who thought the camps were just what hard work felt like.
“I did not pay attention to a lot of things,” said Seng, who also serves as a Khmer translator for many Cambodians in the area.
Along the streets of Minnie Street, many refugees still live.
Cambodians like Thoeun Luk.
“I was happy when I arrived in Santa Ana, I was free, I could speak freely,” said Thoeun Luk, 64, who was a student and son of rice farmers when the Communist takeover took place.
Luk recalls a time when he asked high-ranking officers for food under the Khmer Rouge, and was taken into questioning, nearly being killed.
“They told me not to ask for more food, or else I would be killed,” Luk said in a May interview.
Luk, at 16, was taken to work in the labor camps under the Khmer Rouge, tasked with making makeshift dams or irrigation systems, something he had no experience with, at times going without food after a laborious day.
Luk still lives where he arrived, along Minnie Street.
“My mother who gave birth to my sibling during the Khmer Rouge, couldn’t feed the baby, she could not produce milk. The baby passed away,” said Luk, who has photos of his family and spiritual posters all over his apartment.
Just like the memories of his parents on his walls, there are remnants of Cambodian villages all over Minnie Street.
Apartments have gardens that have herbs used in Cambodian cuisine, or the drying of turnips in the sun can be seen.
Cambodian elders sit outside their homes, conversing with one another.
A complicated past unites them.
Cheth Moeun, a Cambodian refugee who worked as a seamstress in labor camps as a child, arrived in 1989 to Santa Ana.
She lost her parents and all siblings, except one, to the Khmer Rouge.
“Some died because of starvation, “ said Mouen through a Khmer translator.
The Cambodian Family
Refugees like Luk and Seng needed help navigating their new home.
In the 1980s the Cambodian Family, an OC grassroots organization, was born out of necessity.
Five Cambodian refugees gathered the money to rent an apartment along Minnie Street, where they provided resettlement help, English translation, and counseling.
Then they opened a building along Minnie Street.
Today, their organization has grown and is now located in a two-story office building in Santa Ana, where Cambodian refugees continue to receive a variety of services, including citizenship classes, mental health support, wellness exercise classes, community gardening, health classes, and other services.
Many of the staff are also refugees.
“I am a Khmer Rouge survivor,” said Vannak Bamrungpruk, a Bilingual English teacher, who arrived in the United States at the age of 17.
“I saw everything,” said Bamrungpruk, who encourages her students not only to learn English, but also to acknowledge they all have a shared history.
“What happened in the past, take from it, but don’t let your past dictate your future.”
Among her many lessons, Bamrungpruk teaches her students key dialogue or phrases, such as how to identify their body parts in English so they can advocate for themselves during medical appointments.
“I always tell my students, do not get discouraged that you are learning English later as an adult, I began later in my life too,” said Bamrungpruk in a May interview.
This year, the organization is celebrating its 45th anniversary, marking the occasion with a gala today.
The city of Santa Ana and the County of Orange recognized the Cambodian Family this year, and their contributions to the county, while marking April as Cambodian Heritage month.
For Vattana Peong, Cambodian Family Executive Director, taking Cambodian refugees to stand before a council during the recognitions was symbolic– it marked their contributions to the county, especially Santa Ana.
“Civic engagement is something that we are very proud of. Our community was traumatized by the war during the Cambodian genocide regime; a lot of people were not allowed to speak up. If you speak up, you are subject to torture, execution, or so many other issues,” explained Peong.
“And when many got to America, they continued to carry that mentality that ‘I should not speak up, I should not engage– I just have to do the minimum to survive.’ But I think for the last 15 years, we have been very proud of building that confidence in civic engagement and advocacy work.”
Mental health services are also another service that many ageing Cambodian refugees are requesting at the center.
More so, the children of Khmer Rouge survivors.
“I have kids saying that their parents are just now showing signs of post-traumatic stress orders,” says Amina Sen-Mathews, Director of Health and Mental Health Programs at the Cambodian Family.
Mathews worries that as the population ages, it is a new frontier for their service providers, which she points out are underserved due to a lack of translation services, funding, and the small amount of Cambodian therapists.
Many of the survivors deal with high levels of post-traumatic stress disorder.
“I’m getting a lot of referrals now from children, adult children, for their parents, because their parents are now at the stage where they’re retiring from their work,” said Mathews.
“So now they have a lot of time on their hands, and they’re finding themselves rethinking or thinking through all the traumas that they’ve been through.”
The hallways and rooms at the Cambodian Family are filled with elders and young people talking to one another, sharing homemade food, learning English, and gardening.
“They really support each other too,” added Mathews, who was born in a refugee camp.
“If they need support or help, they kind of learn from each other.”
