Profile of Nielson Hul
Profilers: Naru Nakamura, Keyan Saberi, Tim Phan, Katherin Jun, and Ellis Fertig
Interview
Introduction and Relationship to the War
Naru: Doctor, thank you so much for taking time out of your day to talk to us. We just have a couple questions about your experience in the Vietnam War. If we could just start by having you introduce yourself, tell us a little bit about your background, and your relationship with the war that’d be amazing.
Nielson: Sure, I guess. My name is Nielson. My relationship with the war is that I was, or I am a Cambodian refugee. I was, as a result of the effects of the war in Vietnam, there were destabilizing factors that contributed to the downfall of the post-colonial Cambodian government. And without going into too much detail, that led to the rise of a Cambodian Communist party and subsequently a communist takeover of Cambodia via civil war. And then, after that, a mass exodus, when I was a little baby. I wasn’t even a little baby yet, my mom was pregnant when she left Phnom Penh. Then I was born somewhere between the Bay and the Thai border. She won’t talk about it too much, but then I was brought here to the United States. So I suppose the effects are the same kind of effects you’d expect from any displaced individual. So yeah, do you want any specific questions?
Naru: Yeah thank you. I actually just had a follow up question to that. I’m familiar with the Khmer Rouge, gang power in Cambodia, as you mentioned, around the same time. And how do you think, at least in the US, we remember the legacy of these two events differently? And do you think that these representations are accurate of the two? And also, your experience as a Cambodian–how would you like those to be remembered?
How are the legacies of Vietnam and Cambodia remembered in the US? Are these representations accurate? As a Cambodian how would you like these events to be remembered?
Nielson: I think in Cambodia, there is a cultural tendency to want to move on. It’s something that Khmer people, living in Cambodia, especially those my age had to endure growing up. I suppose there’s some measure of trauma and some measure of shame that accompanies that time period when they think of it. In Cambodia, a lot of people don’t talk about it.
However, out here in the diaspora, you see discussion happening because they don’t have to contend with the factors such as trauma or shame as much as those living in Cambodia because if you think about it, all the men or women of a certain age who live in Cambodia right now were involved in some way with it. With the genocide. And so-that’s a hard pill to swallow, to look around. You know they didn’t evaporate and they didn’t all recede into the Cardamom mountains, only the hardcore, core members of the Khmer rouge went into the mountains into hiding. Their peripheral forces blended back into the population and so it’s not something you want to think about when you’re looking at your uncle. Sitting across from you, eating dinner.
Here in America, we’re certain to some degree that the people who made it out before a certain time, were not in league with the Khmer Rouge. So we’re able to have discussions about it, and we’re able to think about it, at first for a long time, as sort of a unifying event at first. We’re getting to a point where in both places, in Cambodia and in the United States, we’re in a process of healing and we’re moving past it, and we don’t want it to be. Well, I shouldn’t speak for the whole of Khmer people but I certainly don’t want it to be a part of my identity you know? It’s something that happened, and it was relatively short but significant right? It took place in about a decade’s worth of time. And we’re talking about a history that is almost millennia long, more than a millennia long if you count the preangorian, indianization of Cambodia. If you think about from when Cambodia as a nation was first formed, then we’re talking about the better part of a millennia. So, there’s a lot to being a Cambodian that doesn’t have anything to do with the Khmer rouge but it happens to be a salient part of history and that’s what people focus on.
Naru: Thank you for that. Yeah, I can’t imagine how difficult it could be, seeing family members across your room and not knowing, or maybe knowing maybe makes it worse but yeah, thank you so much for that. That’s actually a really moving story.
Did you and your family talk about these events?
Ellis: You just spoke about how you in the diaspora and people in Cambodia think about this differently. Did you and your family talk about these events if at all?
Nielson: We did not talk about this when I was a child. When I was a child, the memories of my father are him smoking. Like him sitting in his caolin, silk pants. Sitting in the house in his silk pants smoking a cigarette, drinking a glass of Hennessy, and listening to Sin Sisamouth on the radio-or not on the radio-, on these little cassettes that we had. And my mom, luckily my mom and my dad came together, just a sense of melancholy in the home for a while. Then when we first got here, my parents were very poor. We had a little bit of help from the government but after a while, they just let us go. My father and mother picked strawberries in California and I remember living in, I didn’t know I was living in the projects at the time. I found this out in my 20s and then I went back and I was like, “Hey, I want to see Marilowa” and they were like, “Why do you want to go to the projects?” I was like “They’re projects now?” “No, they were projects back then.” “Oh really?”
I remember growing up, being generally happy but you know, there were things too, that come with abject poverty in the United States you have to deal with. And I think one of them was, we were in a one bedroom apartment and my mother and father slept inside. My mother and father slept in the bedroom and my two brothers and my sister and I slept in the front room. Most days my three brothers would sleep in the bedroom with my mom and dad. Anyways, there was only one room then we would sit on the ground and we would eat. We would sleep where we were eating and these rats would come out of the walls to try to get the little bits and pieces of food that were in the carpet. We didn’t have a vacuum or anything and so they would bite me in the middle of the night and to this day, I’m still, I still have this thing about rats. I absolutely hate rats. So that’s an effect of being displaced. Because in contrast to how we lived in Cambodia, we lived in loads of wealth. My brother, my older brothers would talk to me about how they had horses and mopeds and all this other stuff. And I’d say great, where is it now? I get rats. I got a pet rat, and named him Ben.
How did you and your family adjust to living in America?
Tim: Thank you Doctor. So I mean, obviously all of these conditions, I can only imagine what you and your family had to go through as a displaced refugee from Cambodia. And also growing up in an entirely new country. My question is how did you and your family culturally adjust to the “American lifestyle” and learning a new language and learning the cultural customs of America? It’s pretty common for all immigrants and I can imagine it’s harder for a displaced refugee, so I just want to hear about your experiences and your family’s, going through that.
Nielson: We lived in a farming community, we lived in Oxnard, California, and so because my parents were picking strawberries at the time, it was a fairly rural area back then and a lot of people didn’t know what we were. So that was one thing, This unrecognized identity, they didn’t know what we were. And so to some degree, our identities are formed by the people around us. So this led us to band together, my brothers and sisters and I, so it kept our family close. Secondly, I didn’t speak English until I got to school because my mother didn’t speak to me. We weren’t allowed to speak anything other than Khmer inside the home. Inside the home, if I said okay, I got spanked, I got the flying shoe. Okay, it was enough to get the flying shoe, flying sandal. And then, as a result, I speak Khmer. And once I got to elementary school and kindergarten I remember being confused because I didn’t speak English very well. I think it had effects throughout my whole life as an undergrad, I went to UCLA and I was an English lit major at UCLA. So yeah, we’re rivals so yeah, those are a couple of the effects.
And still, I have my American sensibilities I’ve developed. I have Khmer sensibilities that have stuck with me throughout my whole life. A lot of them accord or sometimes they clash and each particular issue is something that I evaluate separately. When you’re growing up with two cultures, it’s not so much as what parts of me are Khmer and what parts of me are American. They are blended together. They’re like blue and red. Once you fuse them together, you have purple and it’s something brand new rather than something where it’s like you have red blocks and blue blocks mixed together, and where is one thing distinguishable from another. So you have this identity that is particularly Khmerican. If you read my dissertation, you’ll get to see that. That term-Khmerrican, it’s something new. It arrived at through the reconciliation of American and Khmer culture.
Naru: That’s actually-Khmerrican-I mean, I’ve never heard of that phrase before. And I’m really interested to learn more about your Khmer heritage. Being able to read up on you, you got your PhD in linguistics, and one of the big major themes that we talk about in our discussion on the Vietnam War and war in general is how we tell these stories after the fact they’ve occurred and how we remember them. Your position as a linguist is unique because the role of language in war is so important. How we teach war in English versus Khmer I’m sure is vastly vastly different. So I was wondering if you could talk a little bit of your experience with Khmer and how you believe that affects how we tell these war stories, whether with the vietnam war or with the Khmer Rouge. Either would be amazing.
Nielson: I find that, you know, about always, well it’s pretty well known that language is closely tied to culture, you know it;s the medium that we use to transmit culture between us, and so if we know a language the culture goes along with it, think about American culture for instance. How would we transmit the idea of “‘Murica” to somebody from a different culture, and that’s just a bunch of content, and cultural content together in a single word, right? And in Khmer literature, like in the past there’s a reverence for war just like in every other culture when you don’t have to see it, but then when you do see it, and our discussions about the Vietnam War or the Civil War in Cambodia are still difficult content for a lot of people, and that discourses is like skipped over, right? And in English, of course, we talk about it much more freely. I don’t know if that answered your question, I’m not certain. I think it’s your question.
Naru: Yeah, I think that did answer my question. I just feel like it is so interesting, you know like you said something that stuck out to me. You said like yeah “language is the medium through which we communicate our culture,” and I think that’s a really profound idea where a lot of us here have only experienced, and you know we’ve never experienced obviously the Vietnam War, but when we learn about the Vietnam War, we only learn or you know even about Cambodia, we only learn it through the American language and all the cultural connotations that come with learning stuff in it in only English, and I’m Japanese-American, so I learned some of the history about Japan through Japanese and also American, and just seeing the stark differences in how we communicate two of the same events, that, to me is really shocking, and also super eye opening. So thank you.
Why did you join the US Military? Did it have anything to do with bridging the gap between your identities?
Tim: Yeah, thank you so much for your response, and I know we just touched base on your connection, I guess it’s kind of an adaptation to American culture, so I want to know how does that, and I understand you’re an Army Veteran, and we thank you for your service. So what compelled you to join the US military, and does that hurdle of finally bridging the gap between your Cambodian and American culture, does that have anything to do with it?
Nielson: No, no, like I joined the Army because my dad made me join the army. My dad was a colonel in the Cambodian military, he fought against the Khmer Rouge, and ironically he fought against the Viet Cong, who were slipping over the border into Cambodia. He was trying to keep them on their side, so he fought against both the Vietnamese and, you know, he was a soldier himself. He was an infantry soldier, and I was growing up in Long Beach, California. And we were, you know, I was starting to get into trouble and so when I turned 17, March 15th, I’m turning 50 in a couple of weeks here, and he took me, he’s like “Yeah, let’s go to the mall,” and I was like “Okay,” so I jumped into the car and I went to the mall with him. He went straight to the recruiter’s office in the mall, and he’s like: “My son wants to join,” and I was like: “What?” And then, you know, you’re a Cambodian kid, you know you’re an Asian kid, you do what your parents tell you to do, you just stay quiet, and he just looked at me and I just stayed quiet, especially with my father, I just stayed quiet and the recruiter’s like “is this what you want to do?” and I was like “yes”, and so I picked a job and I went to MAPS and did everything.
And the career counselor is like, “What do you want to do as a job?” And I was like “I don’t know, my mom wants me to be a doctor” and he’s like “you could be a healthcare specialist” and I was like “alright I’ll be a healthcare specialist,” and a healthcare specialist is the technical term for a combat medic, so I go to the AIT, the Advanced Individual Training, it’s like “combat medic” all over the walls. I was like “ah, okay” so I was more voluntold than volunteered, you know I just kind of went with what my dad said, and I didn’t really have a lot of options. We were super poor, so it was in the sense it was conscription, you know, it was a way to get out of the hood, and I did I guess, because I came back and I was much more disciplined and able to succeed because of that discipline, because of that structure.
Tim: Did you have anything else to add?
Nielson: Yeah, it helped shape me into who I am as far as reconciling between my American side, and my Cambodian side, I never really felt American until I joined the army, and then it allowed me to lay claim to being American.
What was your experience like in the army?
Tim: That was very interesting to hear, and I can also relate with that asian parent anecdote, you do what you are told to do. You don’t ask questions, so I can relate to that. So you said that you signed up to be a combat medic, is that correct? So what was your experience with that like, and did you see actual combat or were you just kind of like in a, I don’t know the terminology, but like more in a support role, or did you see actual combat?
Nielson: Yeah, I got deployed, but yeah. Yeah, I was deployed.
Tim: And, as for the experience of providing medical care, first aid, to your fellow soldiers, what was that experience like?
Nielson: I treated everybody. You know, anybody who was hurt, even the people who were trying to hurt us. And I did what I was supposed to do, I did what I was asked to do, you know?
What was your/your parents’ experience in the Guam Refugee Camp?
Naru: Thank you. I wanted to go a little bit more into depth about, you know, your experience as a refugee, and at the Guam refugee camp. If you feel comfortable sharing a little bit about, I know you were young, but if your parents have any recollection at the camp, you know their experience or their sentiments, anything that you feel comfortable sharing, that would be amazing.
Nielson: Yeah, my mom talked about how we left with a bag of cash, and that by the time we got to the camps in Thailand, not Guam but in Thailand, it was worth nothing. It was just paper. And so they had jewels. My mom had diamonds and gold, and that’s what they used to buy extra provisions. And then, to this day my mom, if she has extra money, she doesn’t put it in a savings account, no IRA, just lots of gold and jewelry. And I think that’s something that made us as a group susceptible to crime, to property crime when I was young and living in Long Beach.
Naru: Thank you.
How does your experience of the war as a child compare to your understanding of the conflict now that you’re an adult?
Ellis: So now as you’re older, how does your experience of the war as a child compare to your understanding of the conflict as you’re an adult?
Nielson: Well, uh as a child I only got to experience the ripples of it, and then as an adult I understand from an academic perspective what happened. And there’s this kind of cold spoonful of knowledge that you get, and it’s like usually a secondhand experience, and it’s words on a page that somebody else wrote. Not something that you can feel, whereas the experiences I had as a child, and the memories that I have of my father and my mother are something that are more tangible, you know what I mean? I don’t know if that’s clear. And so they’re more salient in my mind as far as my experiences of the war are as a child are concerned. My experiences – I hope you don’t mind, I don’t want to talk about my deployment, my deployments. I don’t know, it’s hard to, yeah. Yeah.
Ellis: Yeah that makes a lot of sense. Thank you.
Nielson: To you, Tim, I was proud, and I am proud to serve, and I am proud to be a combat medic, and I was glad that I was able to help the people that I helped. But, yeah.
What are the ramifications of Western media omitting the involvement of Laos and Cambodia in the war?
Tim: Yeah, Thank you so much, and we thank you again for all that you do and your service. I feel like as a student in the United States, along with many others learning about the Vietnam War, the war is often highlighted as a showdown between the Americans and South Vietnam versus North Vietnam and the communist forces, not really mentioning the involvement that Laos and Cambodia had on the war. So, obviously, you felt the effects of the war firsthand, and also your family members as well. What do you feel like are the ramifications of this ignorance, and how would you think we can resolve it?
Nielson: I don’t know. I asked my father. My father fought very hard against the Viet Cong and I, as a child, I asked him once, “Were you scared?” And he replied, in really crass language in Khmer, he’s like “Of course I was fucking scared. You’d have to be crazy not to be fucking scared!” Which I understand now, but at the time, I thought “wow, okay” but he wouldn’t tell me anything. I didn’t understand why he wouldn’t tell me anything either until now. But I would ask him things, and he would just, you know, he would just tell me whatever I was doing to continue doing that. Like “eat your food” or whatever.
But then my uncle, his brother, would tell me stories about them, because they were in the same unit, and he told me about my father. Like they got stuck, and then they were like a battalion sized elements of Khmer soldiers against a brigade size element, and then how they were situated in a place and they had to hold that place for a number of time, and that they ran out of ammo, and my father was fighting using a machete, and so there was severe combat among Cambodians too, especially with what I know now. The Daniel Boone missions, they call them, with the special forces training Cambodian soldiers to hold the border against Viet Cong coming into the country. So, you know, I don’t think they need a plaque or anything, or even would ever want them, or any kind of recognition. I don’t think any soldier with assault does it for recognition. Personally, you do things to keep yourself and your friends safe. In the moment, that’s all that really matters.
“You do things to keep yourself and your friends safe, and … in the moment, that’s all that really matters.”
For my father, I don’t think he would want recognition either. But there was a significant amount of fighting done on the part of Cambodians against the Viet Cong. And really it was because, I mean there are a lot of tensions between Cambodians and Vietnam. It wasn’t because they necessarily hated them, but it was because they didn’t want them to draw the ire of the United States, of the west, you know? They had just come out from 100 years of colonialism and they wanted to be left alone, the Cambodians. And so having the Viet Cong come over the border to hide pulled Cambodia into the war, and that was the whole reason that my father fought so hard. They wanted to be left alone.
My father — he started really young. He was a Khmer Sadiq fighter. They fought against the French for independence after WWII, and the French became weakened by WWII and after the incursion of the Japanese. Anyway, he started really young. He fought against the French and he didn’t want the western countries to come in again, I think. I can only guess at his rationale. Probably in the moment, it was just the same. Just stay safe, just keep my friends safe, and his cousins and his brothers who happen to be in the same unit as him.
Naru: Yeah, learning so much about your father’s past is so interesting to me. That’s something all of us can relate to: the importance of family. Especially in times of conflict and war. That bond is so important. I just want to thank you so much for going over everything. I feel like all of us have a much better idea, of not just of your experience, but the experience that the Khmer people have had. I don’t think that’s anything that we learn a lot about in high school or even going into college. I just have one more question for you, if that’s okay with you. Is there anything in terms of a story or experience that you had, and that can be after the war. It can be something your parents have told you, that can encapsulate some sort of experience that you’ve had? And that can be something that’s positive or funny, anything that comes to mind for you. Would you be able to share that with us?
Nielson: My parents shared this with me, but in Cambodia, there’s no such thing as an escalator, especially in 1970s Cambodia. So when we got to the United States, everybody was afraid of the escalator because they thought, especially my older brother. My older brother refused to get on the escalator because he thought it was going to eat him. Because you see the teeth at the bottom, and so they made this big scene at the airport because my brother who now is like a tough guy, you know he’s an adult and he’s a tough guy, and he was completely terrified of escalators. That’s just an immigrant story. I think if one experience encapsulates it, it’s the rat story. And that’ll stick with me forever. I don’t even like guinea pigs, and guinea pigs are so benign, you know?
Naru: That’s a great story to end it on. Thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate you taking the time to describe your experiences. I really appreciate you telling us your story. If there’s anything we can share on our end or let you know about, I’ll make sure to send you the link that we upload when we post it on AnotherWarMemorial website, but thank you so much!
Nielson: Alright. Thank you.