Go West! A Memoir for My Sons: Our Family Journey and Khmer Rouge Life Experiences

Sideth was born in Cambodia in the midst of the US aerial bombardment of the Vietminh/Vietcon who took sanctuary along the border near Vietnam. Cambodia was fighting a civil war. In 1975 when the Khmer Rouge took over Cambodia, his family along with the entire population was forced out of the port city to the countryside. Everyone was forced to work the land from sunrise to sunset, six days a week, with very little food. The family was broken up and separated into labor camps. Later his family was shipped on a train to the Kampong Chhnang jungle along with thousands of others. His parents, younger brother, and thousands of others, died from starvation and illness. Sideth and his sisters survived the jungle, but were scheduled to be executed for looking like Vietnamese. Three days before the execution, Vietnam invaded Cambodia and saved his family. Later the family escaped to Vietnam hoping to go West. But after eight months, they could not get out, and returned to Cambodia. Later they escaped to Thailand refugee camps, and eventually resettled in the United States in 1981. Sideth writes this memoir for his three sons who grew up in the US so that they may know what his family went through in Cambodia and their quest for freedom.