Southeast Asia
Cambodia: Refugees Who Became U.S. Diplomats
From Cambodia to the service of the United States.
The Khmer Rouge
The Khmer Rouge seized Phnom Penh on April 17, 1975, emptied the cities, and drove the population into forced labor. Between 1975 and 1979, a large share of Cambodia's people died from execution, starvation, overwork, and disease. Estimates commonly run between 1.5 and 2 million deaths.
The border camps
After Vietnam invaded and drove the Khmer Rouge from power in 1979, hundreds of thousands of Cambodians fled to the Thai border. Camps such as Khao-I-Dang became way stations for resettlement. The United States admitted well over one hundred thousand Cambodian refugees in the years that followed.
Death toll and admission figures are estimates and vary between sources.