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27 A letter from Pich Keo – An old Colleague At a time when Cambodia was globally isolated, with flames of war among the four factions devastating the place and land mines being laid, a letter from Pich Keo arrived in early 1980 from Cambodia while the nation was still in a state of civil war. Pich Keo was a Cambodian friend who had once received training in archaeological restoration from a French expert, and he was then the local director of the Angkor archaeological site of the Ministry of Culture and Arts, that had reopened in October 79 under the Heng Samrin regime. It contained an appeal to, “come and offer support for the works of conservation and restoration.” In 1961, under the Pol Pot regime, around 40 Cambodian conservators who had received archaeological training together and who were involved in conservation and restoration were found to have gone missing, and we were informed that only three had managed to survive. Even the whereabouts of Mr. Buon, a person who was close to me, were unknown. Similar to the Chinese cultural revolution the Pol Pot regime launched a hardline policy, by compelling urban residents to relocate to rural areas and engage in compulsory labor. They massacred intellectuals on the grounds that they had been soiled by Western thought, and many conservators were perhaps targeted, owing to the fact that they could speak some halting French. I pondered deeply as to how I could enter Cambodia, but as diplomatic links were non-existent and we were in the midst of a civil war, the situation appeared hopeless. All the same though, since I desired by some means or rather to enter Cambodia and meet Mr. Pich Keo, I approached friends in the Ministry of Foreign The Sophia University Angkor International Mission The Sophia Mission for Activities of International Service Chapter 3