Oral history interview with Sivheng Ung [Sound Recording 01]

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SR12332_S01P1

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Oral history interview with Sivheng Ung [Sound Recording 01]

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  • 2019-03-25 (Creation)

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WAV; 02:41:12

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Biographical history

Sivheng Ung was born in Battambang, Cambodia, in 1951. She married in 1974. The next year, Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge took control of the country. Ung and her family were driven from their home in Phnom Penh; they and a million other former residents of the city were forcibly marched across the country over several weeks. They ultimately arrived at a forced labor camp. She and her husband escaped the camp, but did not make it out of Cambodia; her husband was later killed by Khmer Rouge soldiers. In 1979, she succeeded in escaping to Thailand with her surviving brother and her future husband, Van Touch. They lived in a refugee camp in Thailand for a short time, then immigrated to the United States in 1980. They soon settled in Portland, Oregon, and in 1984, Ung and Van Touch were married; they later had two children. She became a U.S. citizen twenty years after she first arrived.

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Session 1, Part 1. This oral history interview with Sivheng Ung was conducted by Elizabeth Mehren and Sankar Raman on March 25, 2019. The interview was recorded for The Immigrant Story, an organization that documents and archives the stories of immigrants and refugees in the United States.

In this interview, Ung discusses her family background and early life in Battambang, Cambodia, describes a happy and affluent childhood, and talks about her education. She describes the rise of the communist rebels who would become the Khmer Rouge during the 1960s and 1970s. She speaks about living in Phnom Penh in the early 1970s, about her marriage in 1974, and about the Khmer Rouge takeover of the capital in 1975. She speaks at length about her experiences during the forced march of Phnom Penh residents to a labor camp, talks about conditions in the camp, and describes what they did to survive. She gives a detailed account of her attempt to escape with her husband, and talks about their eventual capture and imprisonment, which led to the murder of her husband and a miscarriage around 1977. She describes her months-long illness and depression following these losses, her continued ordeal during the Khmer Rouge regime, and the horrors she witnessed over the next years. She talks about returning to Battambang and reuniting with her surviving family after Pol Pot was overthrown. She then describes her successful escape to Thailand with her brother and her future husband in 1979, talks about living in a refugee camp, and describes the process of immigrating to the United States. She shares how her traumatic experiences in Cambodia affected her ability to adjust to life in the U.S. and Portland, Oregon. She talks about her marriage to Van Touch in 1984, about the education, family, and career of her younger brother, and about jobs she and her husband worked. She closes the interview by sharing her reasons for talking about her experiences, including the death of her son, and talks about what she hopes others learn from her story.

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Joint copyright for this interview is held by the Oregon Historical Society and The Immigrant Story. Use is allowed according to the following statement: In Copyright – Educational Use Permitted, http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-EDU/1.0/

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  • eng

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