Passing of a hero

“Hero” is a word that is thrown around far too often. Many are proclaimed for doing nothing more than what they’re supposed to do, but few actually reach the echelon of heroics.

Photojournalist Dith Pran was one of those few. Pran died March 30 in New Brunswick, N.J. He was 65.

On April 17, 1975, Phnom Penh — the capital of Cambodia — fell to the Khmer Rouge. While the U.S. pulled their troops out, reporters such as The New York Times’ Sydney Schanberg stayed to cover the war. Pran had been serving as Schranberg’s interpreter for the better part of four years.

Amid the chaos, Pran, Schanberg and two other reporters ventured to a hospital where they were met by a group of armed Khmer Rouge soldiers. With guns pointed at their heads, Pran frantically tried to convince their anti-Americans captors to release the three “French” journalists.

His pleas worked and the reporters were able to escape. Schanberg returned and won a Pulitzer for his coverage of the war.

Pran, however, was stuck in Cambodia. For the next four years, he endured torture and starvation before making his escape to Thailand.

Over the course of his 40-mile escape through land-mine infested paths, he encountered pockets of human remains — something he called the “killing fields.” The Khmer Rouge had killed approximately two million of the seven million population in Cambodia.

He arrived in the U.S. in 1980 and found a job as a photojournalist with The New York Times. His story was turned into the 1984 Oscar-nominated film, “The Killing Fields,” for which Haing Ngor won best supporting actor for his portrayal of Pran.

Pran and his wife worked hard to make sure that the horrors of the past would be remembered, and started the Dith Pran Holocaust Awareness Project, which aims to document and educate about the Cambodian genocide.

As journalists, nothing is more important than getting the truth out to the public. As human beings, nothing is more valuable than life. Pran’s ability to save his peers and subsequent efforts to keep the past alive makes him not only a hero to journalists, but to people everywhere.