An Eventful Day with Many Mixed Emotions

Yesterday I had the blessing of seeing my aunt and cousin from Los Angeles. They were on a cruise that docked in Phnom Penh and I spent the day with them. I had lunch and dinner with them aboard their beautiful cruise ship and I haven’t eaten like that in 2 months! I also met a lot of their cruise companions and had a wonderful time getting to know them.

Aunt Takayo and Cousin Juliet

The stern of the cruise ship

The ship's entertainment room - a group of
Khmer children performed 5 dances for us

We visited the Royal Palace, Silver Pagoda, National Museum, one of the infamous Killing Fields, and S.21 Detention Center (now the Genocide Museum called Tuol Slang). It was a lot for one day and especially the last two places we visited (the Killing Field and S.21) left us speechless and changed our hearts in such a deep way that the world will never look quite the same to us.
The Silver Pagoda - you may be wondering why “The Silver Pagoda” is so named since it is not silver, but mostly gold on the outside. The reason is because the inside floor is solid silver. Cambodia sent France 12 tons of silver to construct the floor and what they received back from France was a 6 ton silver floor (5,000 tiles).

Part of the Royal Palace grounds

The Silver Pagoda

  

This statue is just outside of The Silver Pagoda. Originally,
it was of Napoleon on the horse. After Cambodia regained
independence from France King Norodom had the head
chopped off and replaced it with a bust of his own head.

The Killing Fields – Saloth Sar would become known as Pol Pot (for Political Potential, politique potentielle). He led the Khmer Rouge and was the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Kampuchea and Prime Minister of the Democratic Kampuchea. This vicious dictatorship known as DK pushed their socialistic agrarian agenda, tortured and killed at least 2,000,000 Cambodians (about 25% of the total population of Cambodia) in the mid-late 1970’s. It is hard for me to comprehend how genocide to this level could have taken place within my lifetime. The United States is tied into this sad history in Cambodia. In 1969 American B-52’s bombed Cambodia because of Cambodia’s alliance with Communist North Vietnam (Vietcong). It is widely believed that the CIA supported Lon Nol who led a revolt against King Norodom who then took refuge in France. Lon Nol was made Prime Minister of Cambodia without election, but when Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge came into power in Cambodia in the mid-1970's Lon Nol fled to Hawaii. Our guide yesterday told us that the DK would torture prisoners until they agreed to be aligned with the "CIA" - most of these prisoners not even knowing what "CIA" stood for. Then they would force the prisoner to disclose who their family and friends were so that they too could be taken as prisoners.

Three hundred and forty three killing fields have been identified in Cambodia. The Killing Field that we visited yesterday was located about 12 kilometers outside of Phnom Penh (where the S.21 Detention Center is located). It is located in a field that used to be a Chinese Cemetery. There were 20,000 Cambodians who were executed at this particular Killing Field. In the field there are palm trees and we learned that about 15% of the people who were executed were shot, but that the vast majority were bludgeoned with a heavy stick and then decapitated (many with the sharp edges of palm fronds). I am struggling to write this; it literally makes me weep with sadness/sickness to visit this history, but we owe it to Cambodia and to these millions of innocent victims of Cambodia to share and to know their place in history. (Unfortunately, this recent history is not taught in Cambodian schools.)

This is one of the graves at the Killing Field. These bracelets
have been left as blessings for the victims.

Open grave sites all throughout the grounds

Vietnamese soldiers dug up 8,585 skulls of execution victims. Many of these skulls ended up in this Memory Monument. Most of the graves that the soldiers dug up had between 50 – 100 bodies per grave. In all they found 129 graves at this Killing Field alone. This is a picture of one of the graves that contained 166 headless bodies. The reason why these people were decapitated is that DK (the Khmer Rouge) believed these people to be Vietnamese sympathizers and thought that without their heads they could not sympathize any longer. It is widely believed that the women who were victims of DK were raped before they were executed. I cannot write any more about this. It is too painful and I am literally feeling sick posting these pictures and writing about this.  

The Memory Monument

Oh, how this makes me sick to post this, but to ignore it would be
to dishonor these innocent victims and silence their cries

S.21 Detention Center where prisoners were tortured 3 times/day,
shackled in leg irons, and their defecation placed in a box  

S.21 - prisoners would be hung upside down their heads placed in
these pots, which were filled with defecation

One of the buildings at S.21. It was a former school. It was a haunting experience
to walk through the floors of these prison cells: floor one men, floor two women, and
floor three children; and to see the pictures of the prisoners.

My aunt commented that she found it remarkable how the Khmer people smiled all the time and were so welcoming, happy, and friendly - especially given this recent ugly history. I too have found Khmer people to be as my aunt describes - they have emerged from tragedy to have hearts filled with warmth, kindness, and love. God creates beauty from ashes.