By Steve Clark / Richmond Times-Dispatch
Twenty Seabees from a U.S. Navy construction battalion in Guam went to Thailand two months ago to build a schoolhouse in a village. The officer in charge of the unit was Lt. Ra Yoeun, a former Richmond, Va., resident and a 1993 graduate of Virginia Military Institute.
It was an assignment Yoeun was delighted to have. It gave him the opportunity to do something special for Thailand, where in 1979 he found a haven after escaping a chaotic existence in his native Cambodia.
When he was a boy, Yoeun lived for three years in Thailand in a camp for Cambodian refugees.
The camp was heaven compared with the hell he had been through in Cambodia.
Ra Yoeun never should have lived to become an American naval officer. He should have died before the age of 10 in the infamous killing fields of Cambodia.
Everyone else in his family did.
His father, whom Yoeun believes was a Cambodian military officer, was executed by the Khmer Rouge, the communist rebels who overthrew the Cambodian government in 1975. His mother, sister and two brothers died of starvation or disease.
With luck and cunning, however, the boy dodged death and survived four years of physical labor and brainwashing in Khmer Rouge “re-education” camps far from the village where he was born.
“My survival was pure luck and a blessing,” he wrote in an e-mail message to the Times-Dispatch.
Escape from Cambodia
Yoeun, whose name at birth was Sar Sethra, described his four years with the Khmer Rouge in his e-mail:
“I worked on digging dikes, canals, planting rice, building dams. All of this work involved carrying dirt, using baskets made of bamboo straws. Somehow there never seemed to be enough canals and dams. For four years that’s all we did. Lots of kids my agedand adults died from the dirt/rocks moving work, simply out of exhaustion and not enough to eat.”
When the work was done each day, the brainwashing began.
“Every night after work, the Khmer Rouge cadres held meetings. They were designed to strengthen our morale and our commitment/devotion to the Revolution. The meetings would last until 1 or 2 a.m. Those who were caught sleeping would be made an example to everyone else. Their favorite punishment was tying the kids to a tree and whipping him or her, or putting red ants on their bodies until the meeting was over. For adults, the punishment was more severe. They would be summarily and publicly executed in front of the crowds.”
Eventually, he escaped and joined a group of people walking to Thailand. When they arrived at the border, they found a refugee camp operated by the United Nations and the International Red Cross.
“The Khmer Rouge bombarded this camp. With people heading in every direction, I followed a group toward buses lined up along the border.”
He boarded a bus that took him to Kao I Dang refugee camp inside Thailand. He lived in that camp for three years. Each day he feared he would be sent back to Cambodia.
Instead, he was sent to America. On a May day in 1983, the skinny, 14-year-old Cambodian orphan who spoke no English stepped off an airplane at Richmond International Airport.
All-American Boy
He was welcomed by Sheila Kleff, a social worker for Catholic Charities.
“I still stay in touch with him,” said Kleff, who attended Yoeun’s wedding in 1996 when he married Sotera Sok, also a native of Cambodia.
The couple has a 9-month-old son named Matthew.
Soon after Yoeun arrived in Richmond, he was placed in a foster home. It was the home of Bob and Jackie Spears, a Richmond couple who previously had sponsored a Cambodian family. That first year, the Spearses wondered whether the boy ever would come out of his shell.
“He was so shy,” recalled Jackie Spears.
In time, he not only came out of his shell, but flourished. He became fluent in English and was a top-notch student in high school at the Collegiate School. He was so proficient at math that he took advanced math classes at the University of Richmond during his senior year.
Roeun credits “Mom” and “Dad” Spears with shaping him into the person he became.
“I can’t stress enough the impact my parents, Jackie and Bob Spears, had on my life,” he wrote. “They created the environment for me to succeed in school.”
Yoeun’s decision to go to VMI surprised many people, but not Bob Spears. “I think Ra wanted VMI’s order and discipline.”
Having survived the brutality of the Khmer Rouge, Yoeun found VMI’s legendary “Rat Line” to be a piece of cake.
“He didn’t take it seriously,” said Bob Spears. “He had been through the real thing in Cambodia, where he had been screamed at by people who really didn’t care whether he lived or died.”
Over the past two years, Yoeun has returned to Cambodia twice to visit his native village.
“It was an emotional return both for myself and the villagers,” he wrote. “They knew from word of mouth that everyone in my family had died except me, so they assumed there was no way I would make it on my own. They thought I was dead also. They were shocked and happy to see me.”
When he was in Thailand with the Seabees in May, he did not visit the site of the refugee camp where he had lived, even though it was just a two-hour drive from the village where the schoolhouse was built.
“The Thai officers offered to take me there, but my responsibilities prevented me from going,” he wrote.
Perhaps one day he will go back there.
“When I was in the refugee camp, I was hoping they would let me live in the camp forever,” he said. “It was the first place that I was at peace.”
|
