♪ Cambodian music ♪
[DONUT PEOPLE]
[Samoeurn Phan]
[Affectionately known as Pou Sam (Uncle Sam)]
[Sam has opened over 20 donut shops for Cambondian families acorss Houston.]
(Uncle Sam) Well, when I came here in 1994
to eat one donut you didn't realize how much works goes into one donut
until you actually go into doing the donuts.
You know, it takes quite a bit just to make one donut.
I start off by finding a location.
If I find a location,
I get a family that need a donut shop to go look at the location,
and if they like it, we negotiate the price,
and if the price is right, I build it for them and [inaudible].
You know, most of them they already know how to make donuts,
they work for a family member,
you know, they've already worked for like two, three years or five years
to save up the money to start up the business.
[Chandara Meas Owner of Snowflake Donuts, Galveston]
[Cambodian Immigrant]
(Chandara Meas) That's what I'm saying, when I came to the States,
I don't have no relatives with me, I don't speak that much English,
I gotta start to learn English
and start to work to support myself...
and I don't have chance to go back to college,
so I ended up at a donut shop.
Most Cambodians who take us,
they own a donut shop, they run a donut business...
yeah, you know, it's hard to do it,
not many people want to do that job as I'm doing right now.
[Countless Cambodians were tortured]
[and more than a million were killed]
[under the brutal Khmer Rouge regime.]
[More than a million Cambodians fled and became refugees.]
From 1975 to 1979,
there's Khmer Rouge ran by Pol Pot.
At that time I was 10 years old...
I still remember the torture,
lot of people died by starving and sickness...
most of [the time] they were killing people.
That was a hard time
and that was the worst thing that happened in the world.