Blood brothers

Sonan Samreth, right, reuniting with William Buth earlier this summer: “It’s unbelievable. We talked about the past, the time we studied together, about suffering. Life was full of hardship. We talked about that. He cried. Me too. We were so happy to be together again.” (Courtesy)

Sonan Samreth in Cambodia. (Courtesy)

A chance encounter on Facebook reunites two friends ripped apart and long thought dead in the perilous killing fields of war-torn Cambodia

July 31, 2011

By Jennifer Torres

Record Staff Writer

STOCKTON - The Facebook account was his wife's idea.

"I never thought about it," said William Buth, who teaches math at Cesar Chavez High School. "But my wife thinks that this is a good idea - to share her pictures so that friends and relatives from all over the country can see. ... She explained to me how to open an account, how to set it up."

Earlier this summer, soon after registering, Buth received a message from another Facebook user - someone he didn't recognize at first.

"I did not know what was going on," he said. He ignored it.

But two days later, there was another message: "I'm so sorry, but you look really familiar, like my friend since 1974. Sitha Buth."

It was a name William Buth hadn't used in decades.

The messages had come from Sonan Samreth, who had been Buth's friend when the two were teenage classmates in Cambodia. They were separated when Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge forces took over the country in 1975. Each came to believe the other had died in the subsequent years of forced labor, starvation and execution that killed nearly 2 million Cambodians and sent thousands more fleeing.

"He said my original name," Buth said. "All of a sudden, I was crying. Sitha Buth."

Buth was about 15, and Samreth about 17 when they were students together at Tuol Svay Prey school in Phnom Penh. The Khmer Rouge would eventually convert the campus into a now-infamous prison and torture center.

After graduating, Buth moved with his parents to Battambang in northwestern Cambodia. In the early years of the Pol Pot regime, he said, it was safer than the capital. Still, Buth said Khmer Rouge officials tested him three times, trying to discover whether he could read - citizens who were educated and who were members of the middle and upper classes were targeted for execution.

He held the pages upside-down and pretended confusion.

"We survived during the Pol Pot reign for about three years," Buth said. When the Vietnamese invaded Cambodia in late 1978, the family fled to Thailand on foot. It took them 10 days to reach the border.

At a refugee camp in Thailand, Buth's parents bartered what little jewelry they had escaped with to pay for him to take English lessons. "Just enough to learn how to write to the U.S. embassy and beg the embassy to take us to the United States," he said.

Finally, on Dec. 15, 1981, the family landed in San Francisco.

"We had lived just like you would live in the forest," Buth said. "We didn't see any lights for five or six years. Then we saw lights, we saw buildings, and in my mind, I thought, 'I live again now.' "

An uncle brought the family to Stockton, where Buth enrolled at San Joaquin Delta College and later earned a scholarship to attend University of the Pacific. He got married, became a teacher, changed his name.

It was a picture of Sophaline and William Buth on their first wedding anniversary - posted to Sophaline's Facebook profile - that convinced Samreth his old school friend was alive.

"I saw William Buth, but I didn't pay attention," Samreth said. "Then I looked again. He didn't change much. 'Maybe,' I thought. 'Maybe.' "

Buth had been about 16 when Samreth last saw him. Thirty-seven years had passed. "Still, I recognized him," he said. "We studied together, played sports together. A lot of things."

Samreth did not escape Cambodia until 1983.

"My people died," he said. "Most of the people who were educated were killed."

He fled to Thailand and then to Houston, where a brother and sister were living. In 1987, with a wife and young children to support, he moved to Long Beach, where he had heard there were more jobs.

Samreth studied at Long Beach City College and now works as an aviation mechanic. When he joined Facebook this summer, he began seeking out classmates from Tuol Svay Prey.

For the refugees who were scattered across the United States in the years following the Vietnam War, informal word-of-mouth networks and community organizations have offered the best means of finding lost friends and relatives, said Pang Houa Moua of the Southeast Asia Resource Action Center.

Samreth had tried over the years. "I couldn't find any classmates," he said. "I thank Facebook for the opportunity to find my friend."

Buth froze when he received Samreth's message.

"I've never seen a man cry like that," Sophaline Buth said. She encouraged her husband to contact Samreth.

"No," he said. "I kind of hesitated. It's all too much. ... We never thought he could be alive."

Finally, he responded. "Yes, I'm Sitha Buth."

The men met in Long Beach a few weeks later.

"We spent time just talking about being in class together, and about how things would be in our country if we did not have the war," Buth said. "Everyone in the classroom would have a good job and maybe ... ." His voice tapered. "It's so sad, because all of us, we had no choice. The important thing is that we are here and we never forget the history."

The friends speak weekly over the telephone.

"It's unbelievable," Samreth said. "We talked about the past, the time we studied together, about suffering. Life was full of hardship. We talked about that. He cried. Me too. We were so happy to be together again."