Cambodia Town (also known as Little Phnom Penh or Little Cambodia) is the official name for a business corridor along Anaheim Street between Atlantic and Junipero avenues in the Eastside of Long Beach, California. The area has numerous Cambodian restaurants, clothing stores, jewelry stores, and donut shops, as well as churches, Khmer temples, and service centers for Cambodian Americans. There are many other businesses in the area, such as auto repair shops, which are Cambodian-owned. Long Beach has the largest concentration of Cambodians of any city outside of Southeast Asia.
Pre-migration
Prior to the rise of the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s, Cambodia was a highly agricultural society that endured ninety years of French colonial rule.Ross, R. R. (1998). "Cambodia: A country study" (Vol. 550, No. 50). United States Govt Printing Office. In 1973, the United States commissioned the Arclight missions. This was a series of bombings targeting the Cambodia-Vietnam border to fight the threat of communism from Vietnam.Chea, J. (2009). "Refugee acts: Articulating silences through critical remembering and remembering". Amerasia Journal. 35 (1): 20-43. However, the bombings instead instilled chaos and fear in the civilians of Southeast Asia including Cambodia. These bombings convinced many Cambodians that establishing the Khmer Rouge and a new political system would solve all of their problems. Pol Pot led the Khmer Rouge as a communist group who sought to remove all Western influence in Cambodia and create an equal, agricultural society.
The Khmer Rouge was able to capture and destroy the old capital city of Oudong in March 1974. This then led to the Khmer Rouge's next action of forcing the city's 20,000 inhabitants into the countryside. The Khmer Rouge formally took control of Cambodia on April 17, 1975, around the time of Cambodian New Year. Cambodia then turned into a classless, institution-less society that forced people to work 12 to 14 hours a day in the labor camps on the countryside.
Shortly after taking over the country, the Khmer Rouge clubbed individuals who showed disagreement towards their regime to a painful death. The Khmer Rouge murdered Cambodians for not working hard enough, showing any signs of grief, or being educated. As a result, the Khmer Rouge killed 300,000 to 500,000 Cambodians. The Vietnamese removed the Khmer Rouge from power in 1979. During this political turmoil, the death toll is estimated to be 2 million out of 8 million people in Cambodia or a quarter of the total population.
Waves of migration to Cambodia Town In the 1950s and 1960s, the earliest Cambodians to reside in Long Beach were Cambodian students who attended California State University, Long Beach, as part of an exchange program.Adebiyi, A.; Cheng, A.; Kim, J.; Kim, T.; Luna, M.; Ly, M. & Tse, L. (2013). "The state of Cambodia Town". UCLA Asian American Studies Center.Needham, Susan & Quintiliani, Karen (2008). Cambodians in Long Beach. Arcadia Publishing. These students were from wealthy and educated families in Cambodia. A few of these students permanently settled in Long Beach after graduating from college and planted the seeds for a Cambodian presence there. Consequently, the next wave of migration occurred in the mid-1970s with those who escaped when the Khmer Rouge first took over Cambodia.
The last wave of Cambodian arrivals to the U.S. occurred under the Refugee Act of the 1980s, which was after the Vietnamese attacked the Khmer Rouge in 1979.Bunte, P. A.; Joseph, R. & Wobus, P. (1992). "The Cambodian community of Long Beach: An ethnographic analysis of factors leading to Census undercount: Final report for joint statistical agreement 89-31". Center for Survey Methods Research, Bureau of the Census. These were mostly farmers from small villages with limited educational backgrounds. These refugees came to America to avoid fear and violence imposed on them as part of the war and genocide. The Cambodian students who had settled in Long Beach in the 1950s and 1960s provided services, such as mental health resources, to assist refugees with adjustment to American society. Overall, these Cambodian refugees came to settle in Long Beach to build a new Cambodian community that was destroyed by violence. Long Beach became a destination that allowed many refugees to start their own businesses and establish cultural legacies due to its affordable property.
Demographics As Cambodian refugees arrived in Long Beach, the Asian population increased between 1980 and 1990. By 1990, the Asian population in Cambodia Town was about 35 percent and has declined since then. According to the 2010 census, Hispanics composed the majority of all ethnic groups while Asians composed 20 percent, 70 percent of whom identified as Cambodian.
Over half of the Asians of Cambodia Town are foreign born, and 60 percent of those are US citizens. This process and the rate of naturalization indicates that the community is assimilating into American society.Arguelles, D.; Castro, S. & Ong, P. (1993). "Beyond Asian American poverty: Community economic development policies and strategies". Leadership for Asian Pacific Americans.
Resettlement From April to November 1975, approximately 2,000 Cambodians migrated to Camp Pendleton, a military base in Southern California, for refuge. After their time in this resettlement camp, many Cambodian refugees moved to Cambodia Town, Long Beach in search of support, as well as familiar lifestyle and culture.
Through this process of adjusting to American society, many struggled with various challenges including language barriers, trauma, and violence. Trauma is a highly prevalent issue in the community due to the violence inflicted on Cambodians by the Khmer Rouge. Many Cambodians in Cambodia Town struggled emotionally by having more anxiety and fear in their daily activities because of this trauma, not just the civil war, but also the effects of Year Zero that has been declared by Angkar (Organization), a powerful ruling body that controlled most of its population. These individuals dealt with insomnia, nightmares, panic attacks, and headaches due to painful memories from the political turmoil between the Cambodian Civil War and the infamous Khmer Rouge led by Pol Pot and Khieu Samphan in Cambodia, following the Fall of Phnom Penh in 1975. After the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia began on Christmas Day in 1978 declared by Lê Duẩn, the leader of unified Vietnam to capture Phnom Penh which defeated Angkar and its Khmer Rouge cadres which forced Pol Pot and others to retreat back into the jungle located in Anlong Veng near the border of Thailand from 1979 until 1997.Carlson, E. B., & Rosser-Hogan, R. (1994). Cross-cultural response to trauma: A study of traumatic experiences and posttraumatic symptoms in Cambodian refugees. Journal of traumatic stress, 7(1), 43-58.Schlund-Vials, C. J.(2012). War, Genocide, and Justice: Cambodian American Memory Work. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Intergenerational trauma contributes to behavioral problems during the adolescent years of Cambodian youth.Choi, M. Y. (2014). Putting ethnicity on the map: The making, contesting, and assessing of claims for the formal recognition of ethnic places (Doctoral dissertation, UC Irvine). These problems impact the family dynamic by widening the generation gap between parent and child. As a result, unaddressed past trauma links to various issues, which may intensify the violence within the Cambodian community in Long Beach.
Cambodians received the opportunity to rebuild their lives and community when they came to Long Beach. At the time, Long Beach had many jobs that did not require English proficiency, which granted Cambodians a higher access to work and income. Additionally, cheap and affordable property allowed a few Cambodian refugees to gather funds within their immediate and extended family to establish small businesses, cultural institutions, and homes. The United Cambodian Community (UCC) formed during this time to assist Cambodian refugees with housing, finance, and food. These structures and services helped shape the geographic landscape of the local Cambodian community by creating familiar food, pharmacy, and other stores for Cambodians. For example, pharmacies in Cambodia Town provided traditional herbal medicine from Cambodia.
Cambodia Town's population grew with services, stores, and migration. This population growth created a local network where Cambodian residents could navigate their daily lives while still using Khmer as their dominant language. East Anaheim Street became the main business corridor for these services, restaurants, and resources for Cambodians in Long Beach.
Official designation The initial proposal of designating Cambodia Town in 2000 was rejected because many local residents did not support it. The plan was first brought up by a group of Cambodians who "don't live here," leaving the impression that Cambodians who did not live in the area were trying to claim the space as their own.Hou, J. (2013). Transcultural cities: Border-crossing and placemaking. New York and London: Routledge. Thus, some community activists preferred the name Little Phnom Penh because the name does not impose a "singular national identity" unlike how the name Cambodia Town implies. Some community members continued questioning any official designation for the area because Long Beach is ethnically diverse. Official recognition for a single ethnic group would reinforce racial tensions between Cambodian and Latino youth that stemmed from cultural differences and social isolation.Chan, F. H. (2011). Spaces of negotiation and engagement in multi-ethnic ethnoscapes: "Cambodia Town neighborhood" in central Long Beach, California. Transcultural Cities: Symposium Proceedings, 192-199. Retrieved from http://blog.narotama.ac.id/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Session-A4.-TRANSCULTURAL-PUBLIC-SPACE.pdf#page=194 .
The founders of Cambodia Town, Inc. led a successful attempt to officially designate East Anaheim Street as Cambodia Town. Their attempt included the crucial step of gathering support from community and major stakeholders along East Anaheim Street. The proposal received the unanimous approval by the Housing and Neighborhoods Committee despite dissent and concerns that other minority groups had in regards of being displaced. Community members argued that the designation would not displace other ethnic groups by stating that "such designations merely call attention to a neighborhood's unique characteristics". The advocates for the designation also used other established ethnic enclaves as examples of spaces where Asians, Blacks, Hispanics and Whites were able to live and work together. As a result, the Long Beach City Council unanimously approved the concept of Cambodia Town in 2007 – under the condition that it became a Business Improvement District (BID).
Racial tensions