A Minnesotan nurse saved my refugee family’s life. Four decades on, we watched the news together in horror

‘In many photos, the same woman appeared again and again. My parents would sometimes speak of her: her booming laugh, her relentless optimism’ … Rathana Chea's father Siri Chea with Sandra Evenson at the refugee camp Photograph: Supplied by Rathana Chea

Four decades ago, my parents were Cambodian refugees. As high school students, they were thrown into one of the darkest chapters of humanity’s history, surviving nearly five years in forced labour camps under the Khmer Rouge genocide. An estimated 2.7 million of my kin perished during that time. Fortunately for my family, they were accepted under Australia’s humanitarian program and arrived in Australia on 26 January, a date heavy with complexity for Australian identity, and our refugee story became another layer within it.

Our journey began when my mother discovered she was pregnant. Together with my father, they decided to flee on foot through landmine-ridden jungle toward the Thai-Cambodian border, carrying nothing but their lives and the hope that their unborn child might escape the suffering they had endured.