LOWELL — Millions have reacted to the news of the passing of former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger since it was announced Nov. 29, with many quick to note his achievements like the normalization of relations between the U.S. and China and pulling the U.S. out of the Vietnam War.
To many more, and many still who cannot speak for themselves today because of his actions, Kissinger’s legacy is a much darker one. For a large part of Lowell’s population, that dark legacy is a personal one.
Lowell City Councilor Paul Ratha Yem grew up in Cambodia, and was a teenager living in the capital, Phnom Penh, when American B-52s and jets began dropping thousands of bombs on his country in a secret campaign targeting the Viet Cong during the Vietnam War. Though the bombings were happening at first in the southeast of the country near the border with southern Vietnam, Yem said in a Dec. 8 phone call that he could feel them.
“I could feel the shaking. The whole house would be shaking,” said Yem.
Yem wouldn’t learn it until years later when he arrived in the U.S. as a refugee, but the bombings were part of a secret campaign led by then-National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger under the administration of President Richard Nixon, a campaign that did not result in the U.S. winning the Vietnam War, but resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of Cambodian civilians. Worse still, the bombings and civilian deaths would be successfully used as a rallying cry for the Khmer Rouge, a communist regime that took control of the country in 1975, and would kill as many as 2 million Cambodians.
Yem would arrive in the U.S. as a refugee soon after the Khmer Rouge took control in 1975, and moved to New England in 1981, eventually finding himself in Lowell, where a sizable community of Cambodians was building.
Knowing very well by now what Kissinger’s role was in his life, Yem said his very first reaction upon learning of Kissinger’s death was one of relief.
“The first thing I thought was, ‘about time, the guy is rotting in hell,’” Yem said. “It is painful for us, particularly for those around my age group that lived through the Vietnam War and the killing fields of Cambodia. We do believe the bombings paved the way for the Khmer Rouge.”
Despite the raw feelings, Yem said that at the end of the day he must learn to “forgive and forget.”
“Perhaps one day I will be able to meet him in front of our creator and say, ‘Mr. Kissinger, I forgive you,’” said Yem.
Yem’s fellow City Councilor Vesna Nuon had a similar experience after growing up in Cambodia, finding himself and his family in a refugee camp in Thailand before coming to the U.S. in 1982. When he learned of Kissinger’s death last week, Nuon said he immediately thought of all of the conversations he had with his own father about Kissinger.
“We can only view it from the length of which you have experience,” said Nuon. “And in those secret bombings, they didn’t just kill innocent Cambodians, it also laid the foundation for the killings by the Khmer Rouge. They used the American bombing as propaganda to recruit people to kill.”
Nuon said that everyone makes mistakes, but it comes down to whether one is willing to admit it when they do make one.
“Some will make a mistake and admit it, and others won’t admit it, to their dying breath,” said Nuon. “It was a grave mistake, the bombing of Cambodia.”
Though the secret bombings were part of a campaign led by the U.S. through Kissinger and Nixon, Nuon and Yem both said they were grateful for how they have been treated by the U.S. since then.
“You can’t live in the past. You have to live in the present. I’m grateful every day for what I have, and for America,” said Nuon.
State Rep. Vanna Howard said in a Dec. 5 phone call that when she first heard of Kissinger’s passing, her reaction was one of disappointment that he lived as long as he did without being held accountable.
“My immediate thoughts were, ‘Wow, he lived to be 100 and has not been held accountable for the crimes he committed,’” said Howard. “It’s really sad. I hope that history one day fully establishes his crimes.”
Howard lost close family in both the bombings and the ensuing genocide by the Khmer Rouge. For two and half years, she and her surviving family lived in a refugee camp in Thailand before arriving in the U.S.
At 11, Howard had arrived in a new country, now having to learn a new language and adapt to a new culture, after having just gone through four years of a genocide that she said started with Kissinger.
“He is a man that took away so many lives. Millions of lives, and he will never be brought to justice,” said Howard.
U.S. Rep Lori Trahan, chair of the Congressional Cambodia Caucus, said in a Nov. 30 statement that while Kissinger will be celebrated for his diplomatic achievements, he should be recognized for the suffering he caused.
“Secretary Kissinger will undoubtedly be celebrated for the diplomatic breakthroughs he negotiated over the span of two presidential administrations. At the same time, many Cambodian and Vietnamese families here in Massachusetts and across our nation will remember him for the dark legacy he left in their home countries,” said Trahan. “Secretary Kissinger’s authorization of the covert bombing campaign and subsequent invasion of Cambodia forever changed the trajectory of the then-neutral nation. To this day, Cambodian families continue to lose loved ones to unexploded ordnances dropped on cities and villages, and this violence paved the way for the Khmer Rouge that murdered more than a million innocent civilians in the killing fields and displaced millions more.”
While Kissinger’s actions and policies in Cambodia and Laos are likely to hit close to home to many from those countries who arrived in Lowell, his foreign policy is blamed for civil wars and brutal dictatorships that countries to this day struggle to fully recover from. Kissinger and Nixon were found to have supported a 1973 coup in Chile to overthrow Salvador Allende, Chile’s democratically elected president at the time. The ensuing regime of Gen. Augusto Pinochet carried a record of human rights abuses, murder of political opponents, restrictions on the media and disbandment of other political parties.
Countries like Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Argentina, Chile, East Timor and Bangladesh are all believed to carry scars left by the actions of Kissinger, and while many who lived through it have nonetheless been able to build successful lives in the U.S. and beyond, to some, there should have been real accountability.
“There will never be justice now,” said Howard.
