‘Miracle’
Separated by war, siblings reunite after
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Story By Anne Kopas
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ambath Ouch hadn’t seen his sister, Chum, in 43 years. Decades later, Sambath, 55, and Chum, 60, talk easily, sitting outside Sambath’s Faribault home. In the yard, his granddaughters run around in brightcolored dresses. Two lapdogs lounge in the shade. The scene looks nothing like the circumstances of war and loss that separated the siblings. Looking back, Sambath
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views the reunion and his very survival as a miracle. The story begins far from Faribault, in mid-1960s Cambodia. Before Sambath turned 5, his mother had died in childbirth and his father had gone off to fight in the Vietnam War, leaving older sisters to feed and care for the family. After his father remarried, the family had a total of nine children. Four are still alive. Since his father wasn’t going to be around to care for everyone, he sent Sambath to live in a Buddhist temple, where the child attended school and knocked on doors to beg for rice. Once a month, he crossed a
ABOVE: A South Vietnamese soldier walks down the main street of Tonle Bet, Cambodia, June 1, 1970, shortly after the area was heavily damaged during fighting between Cambodian troops and Viet Cong/North Vietnamese forces. Fighting such as this forced Sambath and Chum Ouch and their family to leave their home for a Cambodian refugee camp and later, the country. (AP Photo/ Henri Huet)
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Fall 2019