Haasica Phan’s family fled the Khmer Rouge genocide in Cambodia, found themselves caught in the crossfire as the Vietnamese army invaded, and landed in Minnesota in the middle of winter in 1981 with nothing but flip-flops on their feet.
Kim Nguon Seng was working for the Cambodian navy and fled the country when the Khmer Rouge took over in 1975. Despite its reputation for cold winters, Seng said he chose Minnesota as his destination because other refugees at the time kept saying positive things about the state.
“In Minnesota, it’s very cold but people are nicer, no discrimination and especially good education for children —– that’s what I had in my mind that I want,” he said, “so that’s why I choose to come to Minnesota.”
Seng and Phan are part of a wave of Cambodian refugees who arrived in Minnesota during and after the Vietnam War and fall of the Khmer Rouge. More than five decades later, they have built a tight-knit and thriving community, starting small businesses, launching churches, temples and arts groups, bringing new foods to Minnesota, and creating space for their families to thrive.
About 12,000 Cambodians live in Minnesota today, mostly in and around the Twin Cities, according to the most recent data from Minnesota Compass. The community has built one of the largest Buddhist temples in the country, the Watt Munisotaram near Farmington, which draws hundreds of community members for ceremonies and celebrations several times a year.
Iddhimuni Moeng Sang, who serves as the abbott in charge of Watt Munisotaram and head monk at the temple, said he has seen many Cambodian Minnesotans succeed in education and branch into different fields over the years.
“They [U.S.-born Cambodians] probably don’t have as much education and knowledge about Cambodian culture, traditions and Buddhism — but their parents try really hard to educate them and bring them to the temple,” he said through a translator.
Some Cambodian elders said they hope the traditional clothing, artwork, ceremonies, food and language is passed down to future generations.
Preserving the history, culture
Growing up in Battambang, Cambodia, Rothana Seng said she remembers her family’s farm, rice fields and a game she played skipping rocks across railroad tracks near her village. Seng is now 59 and lives in Inver Grove Heights.
When Khmer Rouge soldiers came into her village, she said they separated her from her family and forced her into hard labor. As a child, she remembers feeling “emptiness,” but she can’t remember how long she endured starvation and being away from her family. Eventually, her parents persuaded the soldiers to reunite their family, she said they quickly escaped into the jungle.
“A lot of Cambodian people went through a lot,” she said.
She is part of a younger generation of Cambodian Minnesotans who immigrated to the United States as children or teens, and now she is working to bridge Cambodian culture to U.S.-born Cambodians and the wider community.
Seng is a co-founder of the Cambodian American Partnership of Minnesota, which aims to uplift the community and preserve the culture. The group organized Minnesota’s first Cambodian Heritage Day in 2023 before gaining nonprofit status in June 2024. They held a second Cambodian Heritage Day in September.
Kim Nguon Seng, 84, is part of the early generation that helped pave the way for bringing the Cambodian community together. He arrived in Minnesota and first resettled in Minnetonka after his family was sponsored by Grace Lutheran Church in Deep Haven in 1975. During those early years, he said he helped organize events with some of the other families for the community, such as the Cambodian New Year and annual festival.
Now, he’s retired and lives with his family in Waconia. Since arriving in the states, he said the size of his family members has grown up to about 300 to 400 people.
Despite the cold winters, Kim Nguon Seng said he chose Minnesota because other refugees at the time kept saying positive things about the state.
“In Minnesota, it’s very cold, people are nicer, no discrimination and especially good education for children — that’s what I had in my mind that I want,” he said, “so that’s why I choose to come to Minnesota.”
Back in Cambodia, he earned an accounting degree from a university in the capital, Phnom Penh. He dreamed of coming to the United States to continue his education, he said. But the war broke out and one of his friends told him they needed his skills to serve in the Cambodian navy.
He agreed and joined the navy as a supply officer, where he worked for about three years, he added.
As a supply officer, he worked in the supply and finance department. He tracked ammunition, equipment, fuel and salaries. Reflecting on his job, Seng said he remembers enjoying his role and believing they would win against the Khmer Rouge because of the support from the U.S. government. But eventually, he began noticing the shipments of supplies taking longer to arrive in Cambodia.
“We need ammunition, we need fuel, we need weapons,” he said. “But at the time, we’re waiting and waiting, and that’s how I know the situation is getting worse.”
Seng said he helped purchase a boat for his brother and their family to evacuate if they needed to flee the country quickly, he said. Then, chaos erupted. The Khmer Rouge attacked and took control of Phnom Penh on April 17, 1975. His first-born child, he said, was not even a month old.
He was stationed at the Ream Naval Base in Cambodia and fled with 700 people on three massive ships to escape the Khmer Rouge.
“We feel sad because not only is it my country I was born in, but I have my uncle, brother, and some other relatives there, too,” he said. He worried about his relatives and other Cambodian people that were still left in the country, adding that he heard stories of torture and killings under the Khmer Rouge over the radio in the refugee camps.
Surviving the Khmer Rouge regime
Phan, 58, has vivid memories of living under the Khmer Rouge regime. She left her village with her family and siblings as a child, she said, unsure of their future.
As one of the oldest siblings, Phan said she had to quickly grow up. She helped her mother take care of her younger siblings when the Khmer Rouge snatched her father. Phan said their mother suddenly had to care for seven children and a deaf sister alone.
Many Cambodians who were educated or wealthy were targeted by the Khmer Rouge, according to the Documentation Center of Cambodia, which researches and records the history of crimes and genocide by the Khmer Rouge based in the country’s capital. Cambodians of certain marginalized backgrounds, such as Christians and ethnic minorities, were also targeted.
Phan’s father was an educator and well-known figure in the community, she said. She remembers looking at the faces of dead bodies to find her father, but she never saw him again.
After the regime took full control over the country, soldiers told families to return to their home villages. Phan said her family came back to their village and pretended as if they never left, so the other villagers didn’t treat them as traitors.
But when they returned home, she said her life took a sharp turn.
The Khmer Rouge soldiers separated her family by age and gender. All of them were forced into hard labor. They picked weeds from rice fields and harvested food all day. Soldiers took away the harvested food and only fed the villagers small portions of watery rice porridge to eat, she said.
“Our survival skills in each one of us kicked in,” Phan said. “There were a lot of people that didn’t make it.”
Over the four years living under the Khmer Rouge, Phan said she remembers feeling constantly tired and starved. Near the end, soldiers forced the villagers to leave their homes. They walked for miles everyday, not knowing the final destination. At night, they slept in makeshift camps and then were forced to walk and move again the next day.
“This is when you see people leaving their babies behind because they couldn’t carry them and older people just sitting there in the hot sun dying,” she said. “We walked all day until hell broke loose.”
One day, Phan said she heard loud booming noises and saw soldiers panic as Vietnamese soldiers and tanks rolled in. She realized the Vietnamese soldiers were coming to save them from being killed in a mass grave, she said.
During the chaos, Phan said her family and the others were stuck in between the fighting forces. From dodging the bullets and searching for one another through the dust, Phan said they managed to find every family member unharmed.
Reflecting on the hardships and trauma of the war, Phan said she feels like her family’s survival during the Khmer Rouge regime was a “miracle.”
‘A second life’
Phan’s family arrived in the middle of winter in Minnesota in 1981. They lived on a farm in Faribault, about an hour south of Minneapolis.
Phan and her siblings attended nearby schools. They faced bullying from other students and she remembers being called racist names. A little girl who lived next door became her friend, she said, and introduced them to aspects of American culture, such as Superman and candy like Skittles.
When Phan’s family moved into an apartment that was closer to other Cambodian families, Sophia Neou, Phan’s younger sister, said they started to develop a sense of community.
“Looking back at going through all of that, it shaped us into a stronger community because I think the Cambodian community, we don’t want any trouble — because coming here, that’s like a second life so we just want to live in peace,” she said.
Years later, Neou and Phan started their careers, got married and had children. Garrett Sour, Neou’s son, said his family’s journey to the United States makes him proud of his identity. Sour is a co-artistic director and a dancer of the Wattanak Dance Troupe, which preserves Cambodian folk and classical dance.
“I will be fine because I know that I come from a lineage of fighters,” he said.
As an elder and active member of the Watt Munisotaram temple, Sithoeun Chem said he has always been passionate about serving the local Cambodian community.
While in high school, he lived away from home in a Buddhist monastery in Cambodia and he said it felt safe to be there, despite the war.
The monastery was the only safe place he could offer his father, he said, after he found him separated from the family and in desperate straits. That refuge, and seeing the struggles of the new arrivals of Cambodians in Minnesota years later, inspired his passion to help the community.
He currently serves as vice president of the board of directors at the Watt Munisotaram temple. He also previously held positions at Cambodian service groups in Minnesota, including United Cambodian Association and the Association of Cambodian Refugees of Minnesota and Friends.
“My heart is with the community,” he said. “I want to give back whatever I can — whatever the temple used to give to me.”
The next 50 years
In 1983, at around 6 years old, Kim Sin immigrated to Rochester, where he still lives and now works in tech support for the University of Minnesota Rochester.
In the early years, Sin said the Cambodian community in Minnesota was “very connected” as they navigated adapting their new culture in the United States. Over the years, Cambodian families began spreading throughout Minnesota.
“Back then, I enjoyed the lifestyle because we were so close,” he said. “And now the younger generation don’t really get to experience and learn about Cambodian culture.”
Sin is also part of CAP. Hosting events for the community has been more expensive in recent years and the rising cost of living adds strain on families to spend time together, he said.
“We need to embrace and share the culture,” he said. “But for some reason, we forget our past.”
Several Cambodian elders in Minnesota said they want to see future generations highlight the culture’s food, music, art, language and traditions.
“We want to have the younger generation to keep our culture alive forever,” Kim Nguon Seng said. He worked as an accountant, stockbroker, insurance agent and most recently a Subway franchise owner before he retired.
Sour said he wants to see more Cambodians represented in mainstream media. He also hopes to see the youth embrace their culture and to discover “what being Cambodian means to them.”
Some Cambodian Minnesotans who immigrated to the states as young teens or children said they hope to see younger people seek political office. They also hope to see more young people pursue industries, like education and arts.
“I want us to learn from that [history], take from that, and empower that with the new generation,” Neou said. “I’d like to see Cambodians running for state office, even going after the presidency if we keep on empowering our youth.”
Correction: The date that the Cambodian American Partnership of Minnesota gained nonprofit status and the date of the first Minnesota’s first Cambodian Heritage Day have been updated in this story.
