r/blowback • u/PopKei • 5d ago

Does anyone know what Lon Nol was doing in California?

It's very funny to me that his location of exile was California but I can't find out what he was doing there or what his day-to-day was like. I would love to read more about it if anyone has a source.

40 Upvotes

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26

u/numbers863495 5d ago

I stumbled upon his grave in Fullerton when I was in college.

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u/NoKiaYesHyundai 5d ago

Lived in some boring ass suburb with his wife and 9 kids in Fullerton. Probably was so out of it he did nothing but party like an elderly Khmer man would do.

Lot of these guys came to California, and set up stores or in some cases small farms. The guy in that famous photo of a SV officer executing a VC, that guy ended up owning a pizza parlor

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u/theRealMaldez 5d ago

Not just from Asia either. For some reason, a shitload of former Serbian nationals and Ustashe officers from Yugoslavia during WW2 ended up there along with a bunch of Nazi's and Nazi collaborators. Back in the 90's, especially around German reunification and the Bosnia conflict, they were popping up left and right to give quotes to the failing New York Times. Iirc, one of the former Serbian nationals said some wild shit to a reporter along the lines of 'I won't set foot in Serbia again unless it's cleansed of every foreign ethnic and religious group'. (I'll dig the links up if you really care that much, otherwise, lazy.)

Basically, if you're a foreign fugitive from Latin/South America, you end up in Florida, but if you're from anywhere else in the world, it's SoCal.

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u/Donaldjgrump669 5d ago

There’s a bunch of Bosnian war criminals living in the southeast right now. Source: Every few years Interpol will quietly arrest one. There have been at least two arrested where I live. And now we’re starting to get a shitload of religious fundamentalist Ukrainians, which is interesting. There’s a Chick Fil A close by that was staffed almost entirely by Ukrainians last time I went.

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u/NoKiaYesHyundai 5d ago

Chic Fil A's new Galician Sauce

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u/PopKei 5d ago

America sent all of their paperclip scientists to Florida too.

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u/PopKei 5d ago

Yeah, I realized his life probably wasn't that exciting but the idea of a restaurant manager serving you and then saying "I was the president of Cambodia by the way" was making me laugh.

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u/HammerandSickleProds 5d ago

Bolsonaro wandering around a Publix vibes.

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u/ThurloWeed 5d ago

Obituaries mention he had a stroke in 1971 and he had been using a wheelchair so he was probably out of it.

One ends with "The Khmer Rouge are still recognized by the United Nations as Cambodia's legitimate government."