Read For the Sake of All Living Things Online
Authors: John M. Del Vecchio
For the Sake of All Living Things
A Novel
John M. Del Vecchio
FOR MY MOTHER AND FATHER
PART ONE: THE KINGDOM OF CAMBODIA
PART TWO: THE REPUBLIC OF CAMBODIA
PART THREE: THE REPUBLIC OF CAMBODIA FALLING
Chapter Eighteen, 31 March 1975
PART FOUR:
DEMOCRATIC KAMPUCHEA
Chapter Twenty-one, March 1977
Chapter Twenty-two, March 1978
SULLIVAN’S EPILOGUE
December 1986
I shall become enlightened for the sake of all living things.
—A BUDDHIST VOW
The Cahuom family of Phum Sath Din, Stung Treng Province:
CHHUON,
b. 1923, an agronomist
NEANG THI SOK
, b. 1930, Chhuon’s wife
VATHANA
, b. 1950, eldest daughter of Chhuon and Sok
Her children are
SAMNANG
, son b. 1969;
SAMOL
, daughter b. 1971; and
SU LIVANH
, daughter b. 1973
SAMAY
, b. 1952, eldest son
SAMNANG
, b. 1956, second son
MAYANA
, b. 1959, daughter
SAKHON
, b. 1965, son (nicknamed Peou, which means last child)
SITA
, Chhuon’s mother
CHEAM
, b. 1919, Chhuon’s older brother
MOEUN
, b. 1921, Chhuon’s older sister
VOEN
, b. 1925, Chhuon’s younger sister
SAM
, b. 1924, Chhuon’s cousin
RY
, Sam’s wife
MOEN
, Ry’s mother
Other Villagers in Phum Sath Din:
NY NON CHAN
, a village elder
NIMOL,
Chan’s wife
MAHA NYANANANDA
, monk and spiritual leader of village
MAHA VANATANDA
, second monk
KPA
, a mountaineer boy
HENG
and
KHIENG
, schoolmates of Cahuom Samnang
The Mountaineer village of Plei Srepok
:
Y KSAR
, b. 1907, elder of the Jaang clan
JAANG
, wife of Y Ksar
CHUNG
, son of Y Ksar and Jaang
DRAAM MUL
, wife of Chung
SRAANG
, daughter of Chung and Draam Mul
Y BHUR
, son of Chung and Draam Mul
BOK ROH, NVA/KVM
soldier/agent, nicknamed after the Giant of Mountaineer legends
In Stung Treng City and Neak Luong:
PECH LIM SONG
, a wealthy merchant
SISOWATH THICH SOEN
, Song’s wife, a/k/a
Madame Pech, a distant cousin of Sisowath Sirik Matak, Prime Minister of the Republic of Cambodia
PECH CHIEU TECK
, son of Song and Madame Pech who marries Vathana, daughter of Chhuon
KIM, LOUIS, SAKUN, THIOUNN
, Teck’s friends from the university
SOPHAN
, Vathana’s wet nurse/servant
SAMBATH
, Pech Lim Song’s servant
KEO KOSAL
, a poet
SARIN SAM OL
, a doctor
Americans:
LT. JOHN L. SULLIVAN
, b. 1948, two tours with Special Forces in Viet Nam, assigned to Military Equipment Delivery Team, Cambodia
SGT. RON HUNTLEY
, Sullivan’s sidekick
SGT. IAN CONKLIN
, team member of
Sullivan and Huntley
RITA DONALDSON
, a reporter for
The Washington News-Times
Khmer Krahom leaders (The Center)
(All characters are fictional. “Met” = “comrade.”)
MET SAR
, a high general, covert chief of the Kampuchean Communist Party
MET PON
, Sar’s wife
MET RETH
, Sar’s bodyguard
MET NIM
, Sar’s aide
MET MEAS
, scribe and historian
MET DY
, head of School of the Cruel, KK chief of personnel
MET PHAM
, tactician and strategic planner
MET YON
, theoretician and economic planner
MET SEN
, security chief
North Viet Namese Army / Khmer Viet Minh agents, leaders, advisors:
HANG TUNG
, chief KVM agent in Phum Sath Din
LTC NUI
, commander of NVA unit in Ratanakiri Province
CADREMAN TRINH
, NVA political officer in Nui’s headquarters
TRINH LE
, Cadreman Trinh’s assistant
LTC HANS MITTERSCHMIDT
, an East German military and political advisor to Nui South Viet Namese
TRAN VAN LE
, an intelligence officer/agent with the ARVN
HISTORICAL SUMMATION Part 1
(to mid-1968)
Prepared for
The Washington News-Times
J. L. Sullivan
April 1985
T
HE CAMBODIAN HOLOCAUST HAS
not ended and we remain skeptical and uncertain if or how the “problem” will ever be resolved.
One in ten Cambodians were killed in the multiforce fighting between 1967 and 1975—600,000 to 700,000 of 7.1 million—approximately half to the civil war and half to various invasions, pogroms and purges. From April 1975 to January 1979 more than two million people were killed, starved to death or died of epidemics caused by government policies. In the twelve months after the Viet Namese conquest of January 1979, an additional 600,000 to 700,000 Khmers were sacrificed to the policies of this new regime. And now, amid talk of new superpower détente and Viet Namese withdrawal from Cambodia, the cruelty, enslavement and murders continue.
How did it happen? What were the conditions and events that drove an unwitting people to the threshold of extinction? Was Cambodia a gentle land or the heart of darkness? A sideshow or an inextricable theater of the Southeast Asian war? A fertile lacustrine basin or an inevitable killing field?
By midsummer 1968 Cambodia was a nation set on a course of destruction, yet only a decade earlier Cambodia had been experiencing a period of unprecedented prosperity and optimism.
BROKEN PROMISES—BROKEN LEADERSHIP
In 1946, as Viet Namese nationalists were battling the reestablishment of French colonialism, France granted Cambodia internal autonomy. Three years later, as France foundered in Viet Nam and America sent its first anti-Communist aid to Southeast Asia, Cambodia gained de jure independence. Full independence was granted to the Royal Government of the Kingdom of Cambodia in November 1953—six months before the defeat of the French at Dien Bien Phu, eight months before the Geneva Agreements divided Viet Nam into Communist and non-Communist halves.
The excitement of independence drove Cambodia but the new state never expunged the weaknesses of colonialism or the underlying feudal structure. King Norodom Sihanouk abdicated his throne to become prince and head of state. Using his early popular mandate, partially based on a belief in the divinity of the monarch, he reduced his critics to states of impotence. Sihanouk became a neomandarin, a leader unable or unwilling to understand or direct his people. Under his growing cult of personality, contrary views had no outlet. Elements of the political right and left faded into urban back alleys or into the forests and jungles that cover three quarters of the country. Hidden, the disenchanted joined or formed revolutionary parties.
In the decade and a half following independence, there was no development of democratic institutions or of an independent bureaucracy to run the daily business of the government. Sihanouk delegated almost no authority. No ministers of the cabinet, no representatives in the legislature, no officers in the army, and no intellectuals at the university were allowed to mature into leaders. From 1955 Sihanouk ruled as if he were the government, overriding all institutions at his personal whim, suffocating all those subordinate to him. By 1960, he had established near-total dominance over all means of mass communication.