December 23, 2005

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Palo Alto Online

Far from the 'Killing Fields'

by Bill D'Agostino

It's a typical afternoon in Palo Alto, and high school students are streaming into Happy Donuts on El Camino Real, shopping bags in hand, ready for their after-school sugar rush.

Sitting near them, occasionally pausing his conversation to greet the youngsters with warm handshakes, shop owner Nareth Ung recalls his painful childhood in Cambodia.

"Living in Cambodia, it's just like you're living in a well," he said. "You look at the sky. Sometime it's cloudy but you don't know what's up in the sky; you don't know they can build a space ship to the sky.

"In America, you sit on top of the umbrella."

Even though he knows it's a "one in a zillion" chance, Ung is encouraging his customers to sign an online petition (www.petitiononline.com/Khmer777) asking President George W. Bush to "investigate Vietnam for continued violation of Cambodia's national sovereignty and survival."

Ung knows all too well the horrors of a country in turmoil. For "three years, four months and 20 days," as he recalls it, Ung was a young boy living in Cambodia during the brutal Khmer Rouges' rule, a period dramatized in the Oscar-winning 1984 film "The Killing Fields."

From 1975 to 1978, he lived apart from his family as they each worked long days in the rice fields.

"I never saw anybody got killed by a gun," Ung said. "I've seen people killed by machete, torture, starving." An estimated 1.7 million Cambodians died those three years.

The 35-year-old shop owner still vividly recalls many nights watching lines of his countrymen -- with guards on both ends -- walking past his window into the forest. After hearing screaming, he'd see the guards leave the forest alone.

"I wasn't scared," Ung said. "I was anxious to see who was going to be killed." At times, the young boy wanted to act like the guards. "Fortunately," Ung said, his parents taught him right from wrong, disciplining him when he misbehaved.

After the Khmer Rouge rule ended, the family returned to their home. Years later, his father received a letter from an uncle in America advising they leave Cambodia.

"We couldn't get out all at once," Ung recalled, tearing up.

The family hired a "coyote" (an individual employed to get people across the border) to help Ung and his older brother get to Thailand. The journey was harrowing. The coyote instructed the two boys to only step inside other people's footprints, for fear of igniting a land mine.

"You'd drink water wherever you could find it," he said.

At night, they'd sit completely still, unable to see the footprints. His body was completely swollen with bug bites.

Soldiers with machine guns patrolled the border. He swam through a river, where he pushed dead bodies out of his way. The two boys then ran as fast as they could towards the mountains to the refugee camp.

"As soon as you get into the American tent, you're free," he said. "Anything outside the fence, they have no control over."

The reunited family eventually found their way to the Los Angeles/San Fernando Valley area. After graduating high school, Ung moved to Oregon.

In 2000, he went back to Cambodia, where he met his future wife, Soley. Between April and December of that year, he visited six times, eventually returning with his bride.

Back in America, he wanted to stay in Oregon while she lobbied to relocate to Los Angeles and run a doughnut shop, on the advice of friends.

"I didn't want to go to Los Angeles," Ung recalled. "She said, 'Too bad.'"

So from Oregon, they made their way south to a doughnut shop on a wide road situated a few hundred miles north of Southern California.

"I said, 'Soley, this is not Los Angeles. This is called Palo Alto,'" he recalled. "She said, 'Whatever. This is where we'll work.'" They bought Happy Donuts from the previous owner two years ago.

The shop -- open 24 hours -- is a popular hangout with local students. It features free wireless Internet access, cafeteria-like tables and a large brown doughnut on the ceiling.

Little kids are always dragging their parents in saying, "I want to see the big doughnut," Ung said.

Once, a mother whose child was frequenting Happy Donuts in the evening called the shop. She wanted to know, "What kind of place is this, this Happy Donuts?"

"I said, 'After 2 a.m., we have strippers here,'" Ung said. So one night, the mother came to the shop at 2 a.m., expecting a bacchanalian scene. Instead, it was full of quiet, studying students, including the mother's own studious child.

Even though life in America is hard -- he works nights, Soley works days -- Ung said he feels very lucky.

"America is everything to me," he said. "America gives me life; America gives me the true meaning of freedom. I just want to pass that to my own people, to my hometown Cambodia. I just want them to know, to understand the meaning of life. Not just a moment of breathing, but a moment of life.

"What is (the) meaning of life? The true meaning, an American's life? It's magical. I just want them to know that."

Staff Writer Bill D'Agostino can be e-mailed at bdagostino@paweekly.com.

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