An American success story

Hanh Soy, community liason for Creekside School, holds up his certificate of naturalization after being sworn-in as a citizen by District Director of Citizenship and Immigration Service of the Department of Homeland Security Susan Curda at a ceremony at the school in Stockton. (CLIFFORD OTO/The Record)

S.J. man, who decades before escaped Khmer Rouge, becomes U.S. citizen

October 22, 2011

By Keith Reid

Record Staff Writer (Stockton, California, USA)

STOCKTON - Hann Soy was 17 years old when he arrived at the snow-filled streets of Boston on Dec. 26, 1985, the end of a horrific four years struggling to survive in the scorching humidity of the Cambodian jungle and eventually a Thailand refugee camp.

He'd never seen snow before. It may as well have been gold.

"We said it was heaven," said Soy, 41, on Friday, moments before he took the oath to become an American citizen.

"We were in Cambodia at a bad time. I was 8 years old and taken away from my family to work hard labor in the rice fields 24 hours a day. I called it 'the killing fields' because not everybody could survive."

It was late 1978 or early 1979 when Soy could no longer manage his fear. He said he decided to escape the Khmer Rouge - the communist regime that killed millions of Cambodians - and he fled from the rice fields back to his village, where many had already died of starvation. He was "shocked and happy" to find his parents there alive.

"They both weighed about 60 pounds," he said. "More than 80 percent of the village had died. They were alive."

The family, including Soy's brother and sister, fled to the Cambodian jungle where they lived for 31/2 years, surviving by eating leaves, snakes and bugs.

The border was littered with millions of land mines and Khmer Rouge operatives searching for escapees. The family was "scared every day," until they eventually found their way to a Thailand refugee camp and later moved on to the Philippines before moving to the United States.

"We came to Stockton in 1987. I went to Morada Middle School and Tokay High. I didn't know any English. It was very hard," he said, noting that he was bullied by his peers. "I graduated, and all I wanted to do was work for the school district."

Now, 24 years later, Soy stood in front of the Creekside Elementary students roaring in approval.

Many waved miniature American flags and sang patriotic songs in his honor. His wife, Kosal Kruth, also a Cambodian refugee, and two daughters, Julie and Sallida, Soy watched proudly as well.

"This is something he's talked about a lot," Kruth said.

The federal Department of Homeland Security arranged to be on campus to help Soy through his citizenship oath, the same school where one year ago they came to celebrate the citizenship of Principal Louise Roachford-Gould, who immigrated to the United States from England.

"It's a little bit of a unique way to put Creekside on the map," Roachford-Gould said. "Mr. Soy was here last year, and he told the students and staff he would become a citizen, and he kept to it."

Susan Curda, Homeland Security's district director of Citizenship and Immigration, delivered Soy his certificate of citizenship and quizzed the Creekside children with naturalization questions that appear on the citizenship test.

The children knew that the Missouri and Mississippi rivers are the longest in the country, and they knew several other facts.

Soy said he is now making it his mission to find a third member of the Creekside community to become a citizen in front of the student body next year.

"I'm the last in my family to become a citizen. I can't believe it," he said, thanking his late father for giving his family the courage to escape from Cambodia. "I came here as a nonEnglish-speaking boy. I'm an American man today."

Contact reporter Keith Reid at (209) 546-8257 or kreid@recordnet.com. Visit his blog at

recordnet.com/lodiblog.