Father Missed His Plane

The Memoir

“When elephants collide, the ants get trampled”

By Vincent Lee

On April 12, 1975, just days before Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge seized control of Phnom Penh, Vincent’s father missed a chance to take his family and leave Cambodia on a US Marine Corp helicopter. Had they boarded the chopper, Vincent would not have had to endure four years of brutality and starvation. He and his family somehow survived the genocide, but then found themselves destitute when they returned to the ruined city that was once their home.

In 1980, along with his sixty-four-year-old grandmother, Vincent risked his life to cross the landmine-filled Cambodian jungle to reach a refugee camp in Thailand. Father Missed His Plane is a powerful real-life story of a boy surviving the Killing Fields of Cambodia.
It also provides insights into the mind-boggling question “Why?” of that terrible period. Vincent’s experience as a refugee who ultimately found sanctuary has a special poignancy in today’s global political climate.

Vincent Lee

The Author

Vincent Lee was born and grew up in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Vincent’s parents were both ethnic Chinese-Cambodian. Like many of his Cambodian generation, from April 17, 1975, when the Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge seized control of Phnom Penh, Vincent was taken away from his family at the age of ten to join a labour camp for boys and endured four years of brutality and starvation. Vincent was one of the luckiest survivors of the greatest genocide in Cambodian history under the regime.
In October 1981, Vincent immigrated to Australia and began sustained formal education for the first time at the Christian Brother’s school in Sydney. He completed his Bachelor of Economics degree at Sydney University in 1991. He also holds a master degree in Finance from the University of Technology, Sydney. These days, Vincent works in a global technology company in Tokyo.

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Mama is proud to present "Father Missed His Plane" by Vincent Lee