Career in The Khmer Resistance
Samouth was a Khmer Krom who was born and raised in Cochinchina (in the Southern part of Vietnam). Samouth was trained as a Buddhist monk in his youth, and by World War II, he was professor of Pali at Unnalom Monastery in Phnom Penh. In 1945, an American air raid directed against Japanese military targets struck the Monastery, causing several deaths. Samouth was so frightened by this event that he fled to the countryside, eventually making his way to Vietnam, where he joined the Viet Minh. In the late 1940s, Samouth lectured groups of Khmer recruits on political awareness and economics.
Samouth went on to be a founder member of the Khmer People's Revolutionary Party, the precursor to the Communist Party of Kampuchea, along with Son Ngoc Minh. He was also one of the leaders of the United Issarak Front, a broadly leftist affiliation of various disparate elements of the anti-French resistance, the Khmer Issarak. When the Front formed its 'Khmer Resistance Government', Samouth was named as the Interior Minister.
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