From Sideshow To Genocide: Stories of the Cambodian Holocaust” [excerpts]

By Andy Carvin

“I had to help the North Vietnamese, and I have got their promise to respect always Cambodia as an independent state, a neutral state, non-aligned state without any interference in our internal affairs from Vietnam.”

N. Sihanouk

Leaders of the "bloodless coup" of 18 March 1970 Prince Sisowat Sirik Matak [left] and Gen Lon Nol

President R Nixon explained US operations in Cambodia [google image]

Nixon observed of Sihanouk: "He seemed prouder of his musical talents than of his political leadership, and he appeared to me to be totally unrealistic about the problems his country faced" [sic!]

The Illegal Bombing of Cambodia

From the 9th to the 13th centuries, the Cambodian empire of Angkor was the most powerful political force in Southeast Asia. Their expertise in irrigation and public works allowed the Khmer people to build their 250-square-mile capital of Angkor, while their military prowess expanded their control into modern-day Vietnam, Laos and Thailand. Beginning in the fifteenth century, though, the Thai kingdom of Siam began its ascendance in the region. After several half-successful attempts, the Siamese sacked Angkor in 1594. The once great city of Angkor never recovered, and the Khmer empire soon fell to pieces.

By the early 1800s, much of modern Cambodia's territory was either a part of Siam or was a vassal state paying tribute to the Siamese court. Additionally, significant portions of its land were occupied by Vietnamese who were migrating west at a steady rate. Not unlike Siam, Vietnam was Cambodia's historical enemy, but Vietnamese expansion into Cambodian territory proved to be the more humiliating experience. Cambodia managed to maintain its monarchy, but the Khmer kings of this period were largely powerless.

When the French arrived in Southeast Asia to colonize Cochin China (southern Vietnam), it was only a matter of time before they set their eyes on Cambodian territory. The French recognized an excellent opportunity in Cambodia - Cambodia was weak and subservient to the Siamese empire, which was weakening in its own right. But Siam also had the support of Great Britain, France's chief colonial rival. Cambodia could serve as an excellent buffer zone between their precious Cochin China and pro-British Siam. Similarly, King Norodom of Cambodia recognized the French could provide his fragile government protection from Vietnamese encroachment from the east, so in 1863 he signed a treaty of protection. A year later the French annexed Cambodia, adding it to its Indochina union.

For over 75 years the French administered the economic affairs of the Cambodian state. The Cambodian monarchy managed to survive, but as during the Siamese vassal period, the king served largely as a cultural symbol rather than a political leader. Despite occasional unrest, the French colonial period was a relatively quiet time for Cambodia, for France's main interests lay in Vietnam. The Cambodians themselves, though, did not always feel the positive effects of France's hands-off approach since the colonialists employed Vietnamese civil servants to manage Cambodian affairs. Many Cambodians were severely frustrated by the fact that their historical rivals were now being selected to oversee the Cambodia state.

Steady signs of significant Cambodian political upheaval first became apparent in 1941, when King Sisowath Monivong died. The Sisowath family had consolidated its power base over the decades - a power base that now caused the French much concern. The French wanted a king who would acquiesce to their colonial administration, so they denied the Sisowath family (including their rising star prince, Sirik Matak) the right to the throne. The French instead selected a king from the house of Norodom, close cousins of the Sisowaths. The Norodom family could legitimately trace its claim to the throne through several Norodom monarchs of the late 1800s, yet by 1941 they were seen by the French as the weaker royal house. With this cynical strategy in mind, the French chose an inexperienced young prince, 19-year-old Norodom Sihanouk, as the new Cambodian king.

Colonial France's motives for putting a young inexperienced rival royal on the throne may not be dissimilar to those of Hanoi in its endorsement of current CPP leaders--School of Vice

It wasn't long though before the French lost control of the situation. Later that same year Japan invaded Southeast Asia, quickly occupying all of French Indochina, including Cambodia. The Japanese left Sihanouk on the throne and allowed Vichy French representatives to administrate Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. They also began to reinforce local anti-colonialist feelings in the hopes of making the peoples of Indochina simultaneously pro-Japanese and anti-French, despite the fact that the Japanese were a form of colonialists in their own right. Both the Japanese government and their Thai allies supported the Khmer Issarak (Free Khmer) partisans, an anti-French Cambodian guerrilla movement led by Son Ngoc Thanh, a popular Khmer republican and politician. By March 1945, though, Japan recognized that they would soon lose hold of Indochina, yet they did not want to allow France to regain its former position in Southeast Asia. As one of their final acts of occupation the Japanese ordered the kings of Indochina - Cambodia's Sihanouk, Laos' King Sisavang Vong, and Vietnam's Emperor Bao Dai - to declare independence from France. Suddenly the colonies of French Indochina were transformed into fledgling nations - nations whose long term aspirations for true independence remained in serious question.
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The Cold War Threatens Cambodia;
America and Communist Containment
As tensions rose between North and South Vietnam, Sihanouk flirted more and more with Ho Chi Minh's Hanoi government. Sihanouk himself was no communist, but he correctly perceived the likelihood of the North eventually defeating the South. Cambodia was militarily weak, so the only way to avoid losing his country in the crossfire was to make friends with his most dangerous enemy - the North Vietnamese. His overtures to North Vietnam (not to mention to China and the Soviet Union) made the governments of the West very nervous. Even Sihanouk's own ministers, who were steadfastly anti-Vietnamese, privately balked at the idea of acquiescing to Ho Chi Minh.

In Washington DC, the number of Sihanouk critics seemed to increase every day. Richard Nixon, who as Dwight Eisenhower's vice president had met the prince on a trip to Phnom Penh, described Sihanouk as "flighty." Nixon went on to say, "He seemed prouder of his musical talents than of his political leadership, and he appeared to me to be totally unrealistic about the problems his country faced." (Shawcross, p 51) But it was more than Sihanouk's eccentric personality that gave US foreign policymakers much pause. Following the end of World War II, policymakers within the corridors of the US State Department began to embrace what would eventually become known as domino theory, which held that weak governments in a given geographical area were easily susceptible to communism once communists had achieved a foothold nearby. If a young but powerful communist country could cause one weak nation to fall, others would surely follow. The theory had proven true in post-WWII Eastern Europe and the Balkans; by 1947 both Greece and Turkey were threatened by expanding communist insurgencies.

Now the United States feared the domino theory had come into play in Southeast Asia. The signs were all there: soon after China's 1947 communist revolution they began to support Ho Chi Minh's nationalist ambitions in Vietnam. Though many observers saw Ho as being a nationalist first and a communist second, China's overtures made it all the more easy for him to espouse communism as the answer to the national struggle. China's conversion to communism was scary enough for US officials - the thought of Vietnam following suit inspired an ugly premonition: if a united Vietnam became communist, Laos and Cambodia would fall with it; other Southeast Asian nations from Thailand to Indonesia would become even more vulnerable. Worse-case scenarios of a communist India or Australia fell into place quite easily thanks to the logic of domino theory. As far as the United States was concerned, South Vietnam would become the bulwark for Western capitalism and democracy; Ho Chi Minh's aspirations for a united communist Vietnam would not be tolerated.

In the grand scheme of Asian domino theory, the former Indochina colonies - including Cambodia - were considered a collective domino waiting to topple; understandably, Sihanouk's subsequent public courtship with communist leaders angered many American politicians. Unfortunately neither the US nor Sihanouk himself was very successful at burying the hatchet, so political tensions would rise on a reoccurring basis. For example, Sihanouk often complained that US officials would treat him like a child during private diplomatic meetings, chastising him on how he ran his affairs. Sihanouk would then respond in kind with bombastic anti-US rhetoric that would infuriate the Americans. And in 1959, when Sihanouk successfully quashed an anti-royalist uprising in Siem Reap province, he blamed the entire incident on a CIA-supported attempt to overthrow him. Yet despite the tempestuousness of their relationship, the US managed to support Cambodia with financial aid. These funds built up Cambodian infrastructure and encouraged Sihanouk to stick with Washington's agenda. Some of his ministers, including a frail but well-connected general named Lon Nol, became friendly with the US thanks to the steady flow of economic aid.

In 1963, unpopular South Vietnamese president Ngo Dinh Diem was murdered in a coup that was tacitly supported by the US. Sihanouk was furious with what he saw as the United States' arrogant interference in Asia's local affairs, so he refused further aid and ordered the US embassy staff out of Cambodia. In numerous public diatribes he levied charges that the US was still supporting Son Ngoc Thanh, the once-popular anti-monarchist partisan whom he personally despised. Privately, Lon Nol and other pro-US ministers were uncomfortable with Sihanouk's turn against the US, yet they knew they were in no position to do much about it. And in what may have been an attempt to send positive signals to China and North Vietnam, Sihanouk announced he would nationalize much of the country's industrial infrastructure, declaring himself an ardent socialist and a crusader against Western imperialism.

Meanwhile a new war between North and South Vietnam escalated. The French were long gone from the scene, so American presidents Kennedy and Johnson successively supplied a growing stream of military advisors to aid South Vietnam's Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN). ARVN, a poorly commanded and often corrupt fighting force, was up against two deadly foes: the North Vietnam Army (NVA), the North's regular army, and the Viet Cong (VC), an intricate guerrilla network of armed South Vietnamese citizens who supported Hanoi's fight for reunification with the South.

As early as 1965, Prince Sihanouk quietly tolerated small VC/NVA camps inside the Cambodian border. Because Cambodia was internationally regarded as neutral, both North and South Vietnam were supposed to respect its borders. But the communists gambled that they could take advantage of Sihanouk's military weakness and hide in Cambodian forests along the border. If the United States ever discovered the intrusion, the communists bet that President Johnson wouldn't have the stomach for a fight in a neutral, non-combatant country (though it should be noted that the US had no such aversion to engaging in a secret war in neutral Laos, where North Vietnamese troop movements were more flagrant). Sihanouk knew he couldn't afford to make Hanoi an enemy, so he never raised a significant protest against these border incursions. Similarly, China forced him to open up his southern port city of Sihanoukville to clandestine supply smuggling to the Viet Cong, whose previous smuggling route along the Ho Chi Minh Trail through Laos had been hampered by covert US bombing. Again, Sihanouk did not protest, despite his private distaste for the communists. At least in the case of the Sihanoukville smuggling operation there was serious money to be made, so in order to placate his pro-US ministers, Sihanouk allowed them to take a piece of the concessions. These illicit profits gave these ministers and the Cambodian armed forces an early taste of the rampant corruption that would later erode military discipline to the breaking point.

As US intelligence received reports of communist supply movements within Cambodian territory, the CIA began to recruit Vietnamese of ethnic Cambodian descent - the Khmer Krom - to infiltrate the border and stop the flow of shipments. The CIA often brought in Son Ngoc Thanh, himself a Krom, to recruit volunteers. These search-and-destroy missions, as fate would have it, were not very successful; in fact, they may have encouraged more VC and NVA units to cross into Cambodia to protect their operations. American military officials became more and more fed up with Cambodia's growing infection. US General William Westmoreland encouraged decisive action, including a full-scale invasion of Cambodia, but President Johnson refused, for he was convinced he could turn Sihanouk towards complete cooperation with the US without bringing Cambodia into the war.

As the war increased in Vietnam and Laos, Sihanouk's politics started to swing to the right. More and more members of the Sangkum were anti-Sihanouk conservatives, which forced the prince to work with them in order to maintain power. In 1966 he appointed a more conservative government and he ordered Lon Nol to crush a leftist uprising in Battambang province, which he did with ruthless success. The violence of the uprising was the final straw for many of the remaining left-wing politicians, including Khieu Samphan. Khieu and other leftists joined their colleagues in the wilderness, who had fled for their safety several years earlier. For many years, though, Khieu Samphan was believed to be dead, a victim of a bloody Sihanouk purge.

Increased US operations in 1967 forced more NVA over the Cambodian border. Sihanouk was becoming more nervous every day, worried by both this troop escalation and the growing violence emanating from the Cultural Revolution in China. Concluding he had little alternative, Sihanouk again began to make overtures to the US. It was classic Sihanouk as he managed to lecture US officials about their involvement in Vietnam while asking to do business with them if they would recognize Cambodia's borders. Soon enough the money began to flow, and President Johnson promised the US would recognized Cambodia's neutrality and integrity. This policy would remain in place until the inauguration of President Richard Nixon in January 1969.
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The Coup:
Opportunities for Nixon and the Khmer Rouge
In January 1970, Prince Sihanouk embarked on another whirlwind tour, with plans to visit France, the Soviet Union and China. Lon Nol, who was now Sihanouk's prime minister, had been abroad seeking medical treatment in France and had left Prince Sirik Matak as acting prime minister. Soon after Sihanouk arrived in France, Lon Nol returned to Cambodia and began a series of conspiratory steps with Sirik Matak that would soon spell the political end of Sihanouk.

In early March 1970, Lon Nol organized anti-Vietnamese demonstrations across Cambodia and gave the Vietnamese an ultimatum to leave Cambodia or face an attack. On March 12, thousands marched in Phnom Penh, sacking both the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong embassies. The following day, Sirik Matak canceled the secret smuggling deal through the port of Sihanoukville. Sihanouk, still in France, was furious and threatened to arrest his ministers. But instead of returning home to settle the growing rift, Sihanouk continued his travels, flying onwards to Moscow. By March 15, Lon Nol's ultimatum deadline had come and gone, so he requested and received shelling from South Vietnamese artillery against North Vietnamese forces entrenched near the border. Still, Sihanouk remained in Moscow.

Fed up with Sihanouk, Prince Sirik Matak concluded a coup was now in order. Lon Nol initially wavered at Sirik Matak's plan, so the prince went to Lon's house with several army officers and insisted that he sign an official declaration against Sihanouk. "Nol my friend," the prince reportedly proclaimed, "if you don't sign this paper, we'll shoot you!" Lon Nol broke out into tears, as he would often do during moments of pressure, then pulled himself together before signing the decree.

It was only when the prince was on his way to the airport to catch his flight to Beijing that he received the official news: Lon Nol and Sirik Matak had successfully convinced the National Assembly to remove the prince from power. For the first time since 1941, Sihanouk was no longer the supreme leader of Cambodia.

The immediate impact of the Lon Nol/Sirik Matak coup was the end of Cambodian neutrality. Because Lon Nol requested military support from South Vietnam, the US concluded that this meant Lon Nol would even support American military involvement. Both the US and South Vietnam were delighted by the change in Cambodia; Sihanouk had been a thorn in their sides for years. Lon Nol was a man they could deal with. But Sihanouk would not go quietly: exiled in China, he made a public demand for Cambodians to revolt against the new right-wing regime. In Phnom Penh there was little support of his call to arms; Sihanouk had caused the elites of Phnom Penh much grief over the years, and as a former leader of the local business community, Sirik Matak was well received in his new role. But in the country villages, where support of Sihanouk remained strong, rioting soon broke out in which Lon Nol's brother Lon Nil was literally butchered and cannibalized by the mob. Also coming to Sihanouk's side were the communist forces of China, North Vietnam and the Pathet Lao of Laos, ready to supply his fledgling army with weapons and training.

But who would fight for Sihanouk? The peasants were on his side, but they were poorly organized. The Khmer Rouge, though, seized the opportunity and offered their support for deposed prince. Once a rag-tag guerrilla army of former politicians, monks and teachers, they now had a cause for which the country people would fight. It was the beginning of full-scale civil war in Cambodia.

Meanwhile, President Nixon viewed the worsening situation as an opportunity to demonstrate his so-called "Mad Man Theory" - if Hanoi could be convinced that Nixon was crazy enough to try anything, including nuclear attack, they would have no choice but to negotiate an end to the war. Nixon aide H.R. Haldeman later quoted how Nixon had explained the theory to him:
“I want the North Vietnamese to believe I've reached the point where I might do anything to stop the war. We'll just slip the word to them that 'For God's sake, you know, Nixon is obsessed about communism. We can't restrain him when he's angry - and he has his hand on the nuclear button....” (Shawcross)

But madman threats had to be backed up by madman action, for without a demonstration of his willingness to use force, Nixon's crazy act wouldn't hold much water in the eyes of the North Vietnamese. Because it appeared Lon Nol wanted US military support, Nixon decided to expand attacks into Cambodia in the hopes of eliminating COSVN, the phantom Vietnamese command center the US believed to be operating in Cambodian territory. In late April, 15,000 US troops supported by over 4,000 ARVN troops crossed the Cambodian border as part of a search-and-destroy mission. Once again the Nixon administration hoped to keep the maneuvers secret, but a series of press leaks forced Nixon's hand. On April 30, Nixon gave his famous televised speech which outlined and justified the invasion. "If," Nixon explained, "when the chips are down, the world's most powerful nation, the United States of America, acts like a pitiful, helpless giant, the forces of totalitarianism and anarchy will threaten free nations and free institutions throughout the world."

Public reaction to the invasion was swift. Hundreds of American universities shut down as thousands of students protested and marched against the Cambodian invasion. At Kent State University in Ohio, where Sihanouk had once visited in his campaign for Cambodian independence, students sacked the campus ROTC building. Ohio governor James Rhodes responded by ordering National Guard troops to quell the riots. Within a day 15 students had been shot by the Guard, four of them killed. Before the week was over nearly 100,000 protesters had converged upon the White House. The U.S. Congress, increasingly concerned over the president's lack of interest in seeking their consent regarding military operations, soon passed the Cooper-Church Amendment. The amendment legally forbade Nixon from military engagements in Cambodia beyond June 30th as well as prevented US support of the Cambodian armed forces through training and bombing raids. For all intents and purposes, the war in Cambodia was now illegal as far as the Congress was concerned. It was also the first time in US history that the legislative branch had ever restricted the war powers of the executive branch.

Despite the passage of the Cooper-Church Amendment, Nixon was undeterred. US ground forces pulled out of Cambodia by the end of June, but the administration continued its B-52 bombing campaign supported by tens of thousands of ARVN ground troops fighting the North Vietnamese within Cambodia. The US encouraged the South Vietnamese air force to engage communist targets in Cambodia, which they often did with little regard for collateral civilian casualties. The White House also began to implement a long-term strategy for assisting Lon Nol's army with weaponry, cash and military training. Cambodia was now a full-scale test of the Nixon Doctrine, which Nixon described as protecting American interests by supporting foreign troops in the fight against communism. In a matter of months, Cambodia had devolved from a country plagued by isolated skirmishes to full blown free-fire zone.

As the fighting escalated Nixon dispatched army colonel Alexander Haig to Phnom Penh in order to appraise the situation as well as their new partner-in-war, General Lon Nol. What Haig found in Lon Nol was a disturbing foreshadowing of the fate of Cambodia. During their meeting Lon Nol broke out into uncontrolled weeping and tremors. The US invasion had pushed the violence even further into Cambodia, and now Lon Nol literally was begging for help, for his army was too weak to save itself. Haig assured him that Nixon was his friend and would help the Cambodians fight the communists. But unlike Prince Sihanouk, Lon Nol was an indecisive, exceedingly emotional man whose undeterred faith in the occult and other mystical matters far overshadowed his leadership skills. He would often consult with monks who claimed to be spiritual channels to the ancient kings of Angkor. As one US cartoonist joked at the time, "The only thing we know about Lon Nol is that Lon Nol spelled backwards is Lon Nol." Yet the Nixon administration, committed to pursuing an honorable end to the war in Vietnam, adopted Lon Nol and began to supply his forces.
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The War Rages in Cambodia:
Lon Nol Loses Ground
From the spring of 1970 to January 1973, Cambodia suffered hundreds of thousands of casualties as North Vietnamese communist forces engaged US-supported Cambodian troops. Despite US assistance, the Cambodian military lost one engagement after another. Corruption among the ranks led to many officers lying about their unit strengths - each unit received a certain amount of money for each soldier, so officers pocketed huge sums over non-existent soldiers while their undermanned units were sent into battles they could not win. Soon communist forces occupied the majority of the Cambodian countryside - apart from Phnom Penh and several key road and river routes extending from the capital, the Lon Nol government had lost control of the rest of Cambodia. Once a spacious city of 600,000 residents, Phnom Penh now bulged to its limits as hundreds of thousands of refugees fled the countryside to seek refuge in the city. Lon Nol's ineptitude had left Phnom Penh a city under siege.

Throughout this period, the Khmer Rouge worked side by side with the Vietnamese in order to gain ground in Cambodia. Invigorated by Vietnamese and Chinese support, the Khmer Rouge grew in strength and size. But as far as the Nixon administration was concerned, the Khmer Rouge were a puppet militia of the Hanoi government - if the war with Hanoi could be settled, the civil war in Cambodia would end with it. It was with this logic in mind that the US signed the Paris Peace Accords with Hanoi on January 27, 1973. US troops would leave Vietnam, Vietnamese troops would leave Cambodia and a cease-fire would take effect between North and South Vietnam. For the Nixon White House, the accords seemed like a victory. But as far as Cambodia was concerned, the peace agreement was a mirage, for the Khmer Rouge immediately broke with Hanoi and vowed to continue their struggle against the Lon Nol government. Because the North Vietnamese had dominated the majority of the Cambodian countryside, the Khmer Rouge were in an excellent position to fight on and potentially capture Phnom Penh. The civil war would continue without the direct support of Vietnam.

In early February 1973, just days after the peace accords, the US reinstituted its massive B-52 bombing campaign in Cambodia in the feeble hope of sustaining the Lon Nol government. For eight months hundreds of thousands of tons of US bombs fell across Cambodia - more than the entire tonnage dropped on Japan during all of World War II. Nearly any place outside of Phnom Penh was fair game for attack, and thousands of small Cambodian villages were flattened or abandoned as a result of the raids. The horrific drama of the 1973 bombing campaign climaxed in early August, when an American B-52 bomber accidentally dropped its load on the village of Neak Luong, southeast of Phnom Penh. Over 125 Cambodian residents were killed, yet the bombardier was fined only $700 for his mistake. As the story of Neak Luong reached the western press, Congress again demanded an end to the bombing. On August 15 president Nixon halted the B-52 campaign. It was the last direct military intervention in Southeast Asia by the United States. From now on Lon Nol would have to defend himself.
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The End of Cambodia;
The Beginning of a Nightmare
On New Year's Day of January 1975 the Khmer Rouge launched what it hoped was the final assault on Phnom Penh. The Cambodian capital was now swollen with over two million refugees. Access to food supplies in the countryside was completely cut off, and Phnom Penh starved slowly as a stream of US airlifts unsuccessfully attempted to feed the entire city with less than 600 metric tons of food per day. Despite a brave fight, Lon Nol's troops quickly fell apart from lack of supplies, lack of support, and lack of leadership. The now-fanatical Khmer Rouge, strengthened by a steady stream of supplies from Hanoi and emboldened by surviving years of sustained US bombardment, made their push into the Phnom Penh suburbs. By the end of March it was clear there was no way of stopping the Khmer Rouge siege.
On April 1, a weeping Lon Nol, crippled by nervous breakdowns and a series of minor strokes, fled Phnom Penh for Hawaii with his family and entourage while Prince Sirik Matak and other Lon Nol supporters remained behind in the hopes of organizing a last-minute peace talks. The Khmer Rouge rejected the talks and pressed further into the capital. US Ambassador to Cambodia John Gunther Dean quickly made plans to evacuate US embassy staff and their families along with key Cambodian government officials, including Sirik Matak, Lon Nol's brother Lon Non, and acting prime minister Long Boret. All three declined the offer. In the hours leading up to the evacuation Sirik Matak responded to Dean's invitation:

Dear Excellency and friend,
I thank you very sincerely for your letter and for your offer to transport me towards freedom. I cannot, alas, leave in such a cowardly fashion.
As for you and in particular for your great country, I never believed for a moment that you would have this sentiment of abandoning a people which has chosen liberty. You have refused us your protection and we can do nothing about it. You leave us and it is my wish that you and your country will find happiness under the sky.
But mark it well that, if I shall die here on the spot and in my country that I love, it is too bad because we are all born and must die one day. I have only committed the mistake of believing in you, the Americans.
Please accept, Excellency, my dear friend, my faithful and friendly sentiments. Sirik Matak.

Prince Sisowath Sirik Matak, former contender for the Cambodian throne and co-conspirator in the Lon Nol coup, would be executed by the Khmer Rouge two weeks later, along with Long Boret, Lon Non, and the other remaining members of the Lon Nol government.

On the morning of April 12, Ambassador John Gunther Dean and the US embassy staff boarded a series of US transport helicopters to evacuate to a navy ship waiting in the Gulf of Thailand. Khmer children observing the evacuation waved to the Americans, calling out "OK, bye-bye, OK, bye-bye" to the departing embassy staff. As the helicopters departed Phnom Penh, the Khmer Rouge shelled the evacuation zone, firing mortars into the crowd watching the departure. The civil war was coming to an end.

Five days later, on April 17, 1975, Khmer Rouge forced marched unopposed into central Phnom Penh. At first the residents of the city celebrated - the siege was over, there would be no more fighting. But within hours, the joy would turn to horror as the Khmer Rouge began to implement their barbarous plan for a utopian communist society. April 17, 1975 was Day Zero for the new Cambodia - two thousand years of Khmer history were now meaningless.