Pin Yathay

Born: Oudong, Cambodia

January 01, 1944

About this author

Yathay Pin was born in Oudong, a village about 25 miles north of Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Yathays father, Chhor,
was a small trader, and his family, though not impoverished, was poor.
Yathay was the eldest of five children. His father had high expectations of him: Knowing that Yathay was an excellent
student, Chhor sent him to a good high school in Phnom Penh. Yathay received a government scholarship after
completing high school, and he went to Canada to further his studies. In 1965, Yathay graduated from the Polytechnic
Institute in Montreal with a diploma in civil engineering. He went back to Cambodia and joined the Ministry of Public
Works. He married his first wife soon after, and they had one son. His first wife and second baby died in childbirth in
1969. Afterward, Yathay married his wifes sister, Any, and they had two sons. In 1975, the Khmer Rouge overthrew
the Lon Nol government in Phnom Penh and began a regime of terror. The communist Khmer Rouge persecuted
educated professionals and intellectuals and accused them of being bourgeois capitalists. Yathay and his family,
consisting of eight members, were sent to work as unpaid agricultural workers in the countryside. By 1977, most of his
family members had perished from malnutrition, overwork, or sickness. Yathay, who had managed to disguise his
educated background for a few years, was finally betrayed by an acquaintance. Fearing execution, he made a run for
freedom by walking over the mountains that separated Cambodia from Thailand. Yathay safely reached Thailand two
months later; he had, however, lost his wife in a forest fire. From his Cambodian past, Yathay has one surviving son
whom he fears is already dead. Yathay now works as a project engineer in the French Development Agency in Paris.
He has also remarried and now has three sons.

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Pin Yathay was an engineer who had to choose between saving his son and escaping the attacked of the
Khmer Rouge. You should read the book ' Stay Alive My Son ' it is his autobiography.
The term "Khmer Rouge," meaning "Red Khmer" in French, was coined by Cambodian head of state
Norodom Sihanouk and was later adopted in English. It was used to refer to a succession of communist
parties in Cambodia which evolved into the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK) and later the Party of
Democratic Kampuchea. The organization was also known as the Khmer Communist Party and the
National Army of Democratic Kampuchea.

He is a Cambodian refugee and a writer. Wrote a book caled Stay Alive My Son about the hoorors of the
Khmer Rouge dictatorship that was responsible for killing all of his family

Stay Alive, My Son by Pin Yathay: book review

Stay Alive, My Son (1987) is an emotional, yet profound, true account of the authors struggle to stay
alive during the Khmer Rouge rule of Cambodia.
Currently, the general elections of July 28, 2013, have re-instated Prime Minister Hun Sen, for
another five years, to extend his 28 year term. But before him was a reign of Khmer Rouge terror.
The novel commences in April 1975 with the fall of Phnom Penh, when Khmer Rouge guerrillas
moved into Phnom Penh. In three years, more than two million people died and an ancient culture
was stripped bare.
The author, Pin Yathay, has a wife and three sons. An engineer with a good education, he was
reduced to a labourer in the fields and rice paddies of his district, to join the peasants, the Ancients.
Moving as the Khmer Rouge dictated, he became one of the New People, a deported person in the
refugee camps of Cambodiaa lower and despised order no one complained. We were all
paralysed by fear of the Khmer Rouge Banished from households was disharmony. Husbands
were forbidden to beat wives. Insults were barred. Children were not meant to be scolded. But
tension emerged in other ways as children were encouraged by the Khmer Rouge to denounce
parents whose behaviour fell short of the ideal. You had to be made of stone, to stay deaf and
mute, and blindly obey orders if you wanted to survive.
It was not long before the dying started. Even in the first week First his youngest son, two years
old, dies of fever. A month after the fall of Phnom Penh his oldest son, 9 years old, dies after fainting
at work, his leg infected and infested. He plans his escape to Thailand.
Simple in his diction, but powerful in his story-telling, Yathay tells of life, struggle, loss and death, but
also of freedom.

Directed by: Roland Joffe

Rating: R (Violence/Adult Situations)

Review Summary

The Killing Fields is a romanticized adaptation of an eyewitness

magazine story by New York Times correspondent Sidney Schanberg.
Covering the U.S. pullout from Vietnam in 1975, Schanberg (Sam
Waterston) relies on his Cambodian friend and translator Dith Pran
(Haing S. Ngor) for inside information. Schanberg has an opportunity to
rescue Dith Pran when the U.S. army evacuates all Cambodian citizens;
instead, the reporter coerces his friend to remain behind to continue
sending him news flashes. Although his family is helicoptered out of
Saigon (a recreation of the famous TV news clip), Dith Pran stays with
Schanberg on the ground. Racked with guilt, Schanberg does his best to
arrange for Dith Pran's escape, but the Cambodian is captured by the
dreaded Khmer Rouge. Accepting his Pulitzer Prize on behalf of Dith
Pran, Schanberg vows to do right by his friend and extricate him from
Cambodia. The rest of the film details Dith Pran's harrowing experiences
at the hands of the Khmer Rouge, and his attempt to escape on his
own.The Killing Fields won Academy Awards for Hang S. Ngor (a
Cambodian doctor who lived through many of the horrific events
depicted herein), cinematographer Chris Menges, and editor Jim Clark;
an Oscar nomination went to Roland Joffe, who made his directorial
debut with this film. Spalding Gray, who played a small role in the film,
later elaborated on this experiences in his one-man stage
presentation Swimming to Cambodia. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi