Starving Season: One Person’s Story

Seang Seng was born and raised in Cambodia, the Southeast Asian country Prince Sihanouk had coined an “Island of Peace.” The Cambodian people knew only two natural seasons: the dry and the rainy. In the dry season, farmers celebrated the harvest. At the New Year, farmers and city dwellers alike brought rice and prepared foods to the temple to celebrate. During the rainy season, farmers prepared their fields and planted new crops with hopes for a bountiful future harvest. In the cities, students studied, moviegoers flocked to the popular cinemas, and sidewalk vendors hawked all manner of plentiful food and drink. But once the barbaric Khmer Rouge seized power in April 1975, they forcibly evacuated the cities, including the capital of Phnom Penh, and fourth-year medical student Seang Seng found himself and his family of 24 persons driven into a countryside of forced labor camps that would come to be known as the "Killing Fields."