FOCUS / RETURN TO CAMBODIA : Homecoming Is Hard After Life in America

Sam Hour was chatting with fellow Californians in the battered foyer of the Hotel Asie here when suddenly a woman burst into tears, ran over and grabbed him around the neck. A moment later, Hour was crying too, and dancing and gasping for air and trying to talk.

The woman was Hour’s sister, Thy. He had not seen her or heard from her since 1976, when he fled the country to escape the Khmer Rouge.

“I can’t stop crying,” he said. “My heart is shaking; I am so happy to find my sister.”

Then, Hour listened stoically as his sister told him how his wife and four children had been killed by the Khmer Rouge. He began crying again.

In ever-increasing numbers, expatriate Cambodians such as Hour are cautiously returning to their homeland and trying to pick up the strands of their war-shattered lives. Most of them, like Hour, live in Long Beach, Calif., which is now home to more than 100,000 Cambodians. Others are coming back to Cambodia from France, Australia and Canada.

As recently as last fall, only a handful of Cambodians had dared return to the country, which was then occupied by Vietnamese troops. But in the last few weeks, about 1,000 have visited, and several thousand others are planning to return, according to expatriate Cambodians here.

“Before, most Cambodians didn’t think it was safe to come back,” Reth Mao, now of Stockton, said. “We heard that if you had an American passport, they would make trouble for you. But everything has been fine.”

The overseas Cambodians are visible everywhere on the garbage-strewn streets of Phnom Penh, distinguished by their American sweat shirts, designer sunglasses and fashionable leather pouches dangling from their waists. Most of the emigres register shock at the conditions in which most people live, appalling when compared to conditions in California.

“I couldn’t believe it,” Narin Long of Long Beach said. “They have nothing at all. They think I’m rich, and now I have to feed them.”

Vandy Long, a 39-year-old Long Beach sewing contractor, remarked that physically he now towers over the rest of his family who stayed behind when he left Cambodia in 1974, a year before the fall of Lon Nol’s pro-U.S. government.

“I was so shocked,” Long recalled, patting his belly, which extends over his belt. “When I left, my brother was so big. Now they’re all skin and bone. They have nothing to eat.”

The biggest shock for most of the returning Cambodians is learning that relatives have disappeared. Everyone knows that more than 1 million Cambodians died from hardship or were killed under the Khmer Rouge, which ruled from 1975 to 1979. But, because Cambodia has practically no telephone service and irregular mail delivery, it is all but impossible to make contact from abroad.

The Cambodian government, impoverished after a decade of war against Cambodian insurgents based in Thailand, offers the returning emigres no formal help in finding their lost families. If they call a radio station, an announcer will read their names and the names of lost relatives.

Vandy Long found that the home of his wife’s family had been destroyed. But a neighbor remembered the family and started him on a search that ended with a sister-in-law who runs a firewood shop in central Phnom Penh. She knew what had happened to the rest of the family.

“It was just like hitting the jackpot,” he recalled. “At least I found some of my family. I wanted to cry. They were dressed in rags. They are so poor the guard wouldn’t let them in the front door of the hotel.”

Most of the returning Cambodians have established themselves in California, but few describe themselves as rich. They bring clothing for their relatives and a little money.

Most said they had to scrimp and save for the trip, made more difficult because many U.S. employers permit only two-week vacations. Travel from Long Beach to Phnom Penh can involve a week in each direction..

“It takes a lot of overtime for an ordinary citizen to afford a trip like this,” Saraan Hul, a Long Beach machinist, said.

Lim Samkol, head of the consular section at the Cambodian Foreign Ministry, said the government now invites Cambodians of any political stripe to visit relatives or invest their money. “Everyone can come freely,” he said, adding that the government, alarmed at the wealth that is beginning to flow to some families from relatives abroad, is imposing a 3% tax on money declared on entry into the country.

For some of the returnees, readjusting to life in Phnom Penh is difficult after a decade of assimilation in Southern California.

Richard Wu, who abandoned his Cambodian name when he emigrated to Los Angeles, now operates a restaurant in Westminster. He said he can still speak Khmer, the Cambodian language, but has forgotten how to read it.

“I really miss it, though,” Wu said. “First, my family, second, the good food. You can’t get food like this in Southern California. Even the fish is not as good as in Cambodia.”