Collecting area: Southeast Asians

In 1979 the Vietnamese invaded Cambodia removing the Khmer Rouge from power and ending the four year reign of a regime responsible for the deaths of more than a million people. In the upheaval surrounding the invasion hundreds of thousands of Cambodians fled to nearby Thailand. From camps along the border of Thailand and Cambodia 150,000 Cambodian refugees eventually resettled in the U.S.

The Cambodian Crisis Committee in Amherst, Massachusetts worked to educate Americans about the situation of the refugees, as well as help Cambodian families reunite. Elaine Kenseth Abel, a member of the Family Reunification Advocacy Project, received numerous letters from Cambodian refugees in the U.S. seeking assistance in getting their family members out of Thailand. The collection consists of case files, correspondence, and photographs documenting Cambodian refugees and their American advocates reunite families. The collection also includes newsletters and correspondence from other advocacy groups like the Cambodian Crisis Committee throughout the U.S.

Organized by UMass anthropology professor Joel Halpern, the images in this collection were put on display during the Cambodian New Year celebration in 1986. As part of the celebration, members of the large community of Cambodian refugees who have resettled in Amherst were recognized.

The collection consists of photographs as well as programs, correspondence, and financial records pertaining to the Cambodian-Americans in Amherst New Year’s Day Celebration and Exhibit of 1986.

A Senior Lecturer in Asian Studies at the University of Massachusetts Lowell and formerly the Associate Director of the Cambodian Genocide Program at Yale University (1998-2001), George Chigas is a noted political commentator on the genocide perpetrated by the Khmer Rouge during the 1970s.

This small collection is comprised of photographs taken by George Chigas of Cambodian sites and ceremonies in Lowell, Mass. The images document the ordination of novice monks, the consecration of a Buddhist statue, a Cambodian festival kite, and a community money tree celebration.

The collection primarily consists of photographs taken by Elaine Kenseth-Abel of Cambodians refugees in Thailand who later relocated to Amherst, Massachusetts during the 1970s-1980s. The collection also includes color prints of drawings by E. Seng Huot depicting Cambodian genocide.

A scholar of Francophone literature in Asia and Director of the United Asia Learning Resource Center, Lucy Nguyen Hong Nhiem was born in Kontum, Vietnam, in 1939. A graduate of the University of Saigon and teacher of French, she fled Saigon in 1975 just three days before its fall. From a refugee camp in Arkansas, she traveled through Connecticut and then to Springfield, Mass., before arriving at UMass in 1976 to resume her studies. After completing her MA (1978) and PhD (1982), she held positions at Smith, Amherst, and Mount Holyoke Colleges before beginning her tenure at UMass in 1984. An Adjunct Professor of Asian Languages and Literatures, she also served as Academic Advisor to the Bilingual Collegiate Program and Vice-Chair of the Governor’s Advisory Council on Refugees and Immigrants.

Nguyen’s papers are a small but critical collection of materials on Southeast Asian Refugees. Included among the papers are materials relating to the resettlement of Southeast Asian refugees, materials relating to the Governor’s Advisory Council on Refugees and Immigrants (1983), and a paper on the status of refugees in Massachusetts in 1987, along with unpublished writings, professional correspondence, and a handful of notes from a search committee.

The Southeast Asia Collection highlights the regional wars from the 1970s to the 1980s, including a series on Southeast Asian refugees in America, along with materials on regional economic development, especially in the Mekong River Basin. The collection contains hundreds of reports on agricultural and industrial projects in the region, examining everything from the impact of electrification on village life in Thailand to a description of a Soviet-built hospital in Cambodia in 1961, to an assessment of herbicide in Vietnam in 1971.

Collected primarily by Joel Halpern and James Hafner, the collection includes background, field, and situation reports by U.S. Operations Missions and U.S. Agency for International Development; reports, publications, statistics, and background information from other U.S. government agencies, governments of Laos and Thailand, and the United Nations; correspondence, reports, and reference materials of nongovernmental organizations; reports and essays by individuals about Southeast Asia; news releases and newspapers; published and unpublished bibliographies; and interviews with U.S. military personnel. Most material comes from governmental and organizational sources, but there are papers by, and debriefs of, numerous individuals.

The photojournalist John Spragens spent the better part of a decade living in Southeast Asia from 1966-1974, working for a variety of relief and peace organizations.

Taken by John Spragens late in 1983, the black-and-white photographs in this collection document Cambodia shortly after the Vietnamese Army defeated Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge and installed a new order.

The Vietnamese Students Association hosted a Vietnamese New Year celebration at the Campus Center of the University of Massachusetts Amherst on February 20, 1985. Collection contains twelve photographs and a program listing sponsors, speakers, performers, the sequence of events, descriptions of ancestor worship, the legend of the earth and the sky cakes, the menu, and some song lyrics.