Follow the Moon is an acoustic account of how a remarkable series of circumstances brought closure to a story of genocide and suffering that had begun forty years earlier.

It’s the story of how unseen forces re-united four people who had never met, but had witnessed the same moment in time—and the harrowing experiences that brought them together.

An American journalist and three survivors of the tragedy, two men and one woman, recall the tragedy of the “killing fields” of Cambodia.

The survivors tell their story of the years and months that ultimately brought them to the Thai-Cambodian border as refugees from a life of terror. A 12- and 16-year old boy and a 19-year old girl at the time, recall how they were separated from their families at gunpoint, their lives in forced-labor camps, facing starvation, constant fear, killings and forced marriage in the rice fields—and their escape in an exhausting, terrifying flight to the border.

All the sound recordings in this “acoustic experience” were carefully researched to reflect what the survivors actually heard—from the indigenous birds in the jungle to the sounds of the specific weapons heard in the warfare they experienced.

I am grateful to Minnesota Public Radio News Executive Editor, Mike Edgerly and Producer Sara Meyer for hosting the program’s broadcast premiere on April 17, 2017, and to the Voice of America for its International broadcasts and for translation of the entire program into the Khmer language.