37 years after escaping killing fields, a Cambodian returns as US Navy commander

This photo released by the US embassy in Cambodia shows US Navy Commander Michael Vannak Khem Misiewicz, who fled Cambodia 37 years ago to escape the Khmer Rouge. He returned to Cambodia with the USS Mustin on Friday. (Newscom/File)

US Navy Commander Michael Misiewicz docked the USS Mustin in Cambodia Friday. He last saw his homeland, and many of his relatives, as a boy fleeing the murderous Khmer Rouge.

December 3, 2010

By Clancy McGilligan, Contributor

Christian Science Monitor

Sihanoukville, Cambodia

US Navy Cmdr. Michael Misiewicz watched today as relatives prepared to board his destroyer, which was docked a few miles off the shore of Cambodia. He had not seen any of them since he left the Southeast Asian nation as a boy 37 years ago, escaping civil war and the murderous Khmer Rouge.

The commander’s face was impassive at first, but it softened as more and more extended family members were helped onto the barge below him. Then he saw his aunt, now 72, who had helped him leave for the US so many years ago. Commander Misiewicz walked slowly down the metal stairs and they embraced, weeping.

“When I saw her this morning,” he later told reporters on the ship, “I just couldn’t hold back the tears, I was so happy that she was here. It’s been a very long time.”

The USS Mustin, which arrived in Cambodia Friday, is on a four-day goodwill mission that includes meetings with the Cambodian Navy and community service projects. Misiewicz made it clear that he places his duties as captain first, but also said that he had been “overwhelmed” by emotions upon his return.

Escaping the Khmer Rouge

Now 43, Misiewicz was born Vannak Khem in the rice fields outside Phnom Penh. As a child, he spent some days watching movies and playing games at the house of his future adoptive mother, Maryna Lee Misiewicz, a US embassy employee for whom his aunt worked as a maid. As the civil war between the Cambodian government and the Khmer Rouge worsened, his aunt and father arranged for her to adopt him, and they left for the US in 1973.

“I liked the person I worked for very much,” says the now-frail aunt, Samrith Mol, referring to Ms. Misiewicz. “That’s why I decided to send my nephew for adoption. And I had the feeling that I would send him first and then I would follow him later. But unfortunately the war happened, so I could not go with my nephew.”

Misiewicz, who describes himself as “happy go lucky” as a child, remembers the tearful goodbyes of his mother, and said he promised to buy her a “big white house.” He recalls being excited by the prospect of a trip to America, which to a 6-year-old boy meant watching movies and eating limitless popcorn there. When he arrived, the absence of his family set in.

"I cried a lot when I first came,” he told the Monitor in an interview on the ship. “It had hit me: This is not just a fun trip, this is separation that’s permanent from your family.”

Cambodian in the American Midwest

Misiewicz, who speaks English with a Midwestern accent (he doesn’t remember how to speak Khmer, the language of Cambodia), went to high school in Lanark, a town in northern Illinois with a population of about 1,500. He was the only non-Caucasian.

He says he decided to go into the Navy partly to spare his adoptive mother, a single parent, the expense of college. After enlisting in 1985, he received a commission in 1992, and says he has learned to love his career. Officers on board the USS Mustin, a 510-foot missile destroyer, spoke highly of their commander.

“Now the ultimate joy is being able to lead sailors who are like me, who just wanted to have an opportunity,” Misiewicz says.

Yet as he rose through the ranks of the US Navy, Misiewicz was haunted by memories of his family. The Khmer Rouge sealed off Cambodia to the outside world, and for 16 years after moving to the US Misiewicz did not know what had become of his parents and siblings.

Long awaited reunion

As it turned out, his mother and three siblings had survived the regime, under which an estimated 1.7 million people died of executions, starvation, disease, and overwork. They fled to refugee camps along the Thai border and in 1983 received asylum in America. They then moved to Texas, but it took another six years to find the boy they knew as Vannak Khem. The search included a lot of phonebooks and the aid of a graduate student in Southeast Asian studies at the University of Texas.

“We knew he was alive, but we just didn’t know where he was,” says his younger brother, Rithy Khem, who lives in Austin but traveled to Cambodia for his brother’s first return.

The 1989 phone call that reunited them was bittersweet: Misiewicz learned that his father and a younger sister had died in Cambodia's “killing fields.”

Misiewicz, who is now married with four children, stays in touch with his Cambodian mother and siblings, although he says the “Navy lifestyle” restricts visits. And he has bought his mom a house, although he said, “It wasn’t quite a big white house.”

“For years I’ve been feeling a lot of guilt because my whole family did go through the killing fields,” he says. “My father was executed, and so I feel very sad, but I think coming home will bring a little bit of closure. I don’t think it’s going to really heal any wounds that I feel about it, but it’s going to help me bring closure to the loss of my father.”