Though detained by the Cambodian government for six days, a Mainer vows to return.
By Daniel Hartill
Staff Writer

NEW GLOUCESTER – When the guns appeared, John Bodwell feared he might never come home.

“I thought we were about to die,” said the 54-year-old Mainer. He was on his eighth trip to Cambodia.

Men in mismatched uniforms – wearing baseball caps and jeans with their military clothes – appeared from nowhere.

“I thought we were going to be robbed and killed,” Bodwell said. Instead, one of the uniformed men hollered, “Police! Police!”

They arrested Bodwell and a friend, an event that became national news there.

Two nights later Bodwell was under guard in a Phnom Penh motel room, watching TV with his guards. On Sept. 13, six days after his arrest, he was on a plane for his home in New Gloucester.

Once again, he is raising money to help the country that just forced him out.

He still loves Cambodia. He still wants to return.

“I’m going back,” he said Monday. “It’s going to be a year or two, though.”

And he’ll be more careful.

“It was a whim,” Bodwell said. “I thought I could help.”

He’s been helping people in the area for more than a decade

Bodwell was 41 when he first connected with Maine’s Cambodian community. He was even younger when he learned about Southeast Asia.

’18 again’

As an 18-year-old kid from Stonington, he enlisted in the U.S. Marines. He served two tours of duty in Vietnam, in 1968 and 1969.

He was instantly comfortable there, among the people, the land and their customs. The climate, sounds and smells would wash over him, he said. “It heightens your awareness.”

Bodwell decided to stay in the military after Vietnam. He traveled the world and enjoyed the discipline and camaraderie of the Marines.

“You just don’t find better friends,” he said.

He retired from the service in 1990. He returned home to Maine and went to work on the Portland waterfront in a sea urchin plant.

Also working there were several Cambodians.

The families kept to themselves. But Bodwell, who said he has few American friends, grew fond of the Cambodian immigrants. He tried talking with them.

“It was all broken English at first,” he said. “Then, there was no accent at all.”

They had erected language barriers to protect themselves. “They’ve been lied to and cheated so much,” Bodwell said.

By the mid-1990s, he was helping his new friends in Portland connect with their family in Cambodia, still recovering from the terror of the Khmer Rouge, in which an estimated 1.5 million died at the hands of communist insurgents.

He worked with the International Committee for Invalid Assistance in Cambodia, which was fighting for the removal of land mines from the country while helping people who had lost limbs due to the buried explosives.

He took his first trip back then, too.

“It was like I was 18 again,” he said. “The sounds, sights and smells all returned.

“The only thing that was different was that I couldn’t see my feet,” said Bodwell, who had put on a little weight since his days as a Marine.

/////The arrest/////

Since then, Bodwell helped create FOCUS, which stands for Friends of Cambodia U.S.

He even met his wife, Srey Mom, during a visit. They now have a 1-year-old son.

“John has the look of someone who belongs there,” said David Griffiths, a friend who works with the nonprofit group.

Griffiths, who serves as the president of FOCUS, accompanied Bodwell on a trip that began just five days after the Sept. 11 tragedy. Also a Vietnam veteran, Griffiths said he marvels at Bodwell who speaks Khmer and has an ease and confidence with the people that is rare among westerners.

Bodwell figures he has spent about $75,000 on trips to Cambodia, buying rice for old folks or installing pump wells in villages where there is too little fresh water.

“We buy practical stuff that’s going to make things easier for people,” said Bodwell.

For instance, $180 can buy a well. For $50, he can buy dozens of 250-pound bags of rice, which he has done. But the supply is finite and the help runs out.

During his last visit, he was in Phnom Penh when he heard about a small village, Beanteay Chey, a day’s drive away.

“Somebody said they needed help,” said Bodwell. So he and a driver headed out of the city.

He was going to give money to a leader in the remote village, located on land surrounded by waist-high grass. They parked their car and walked the last few hundred yards into the village. They were unable to say anything before the police appeared.

“They were waiting for us,” he said. Police charged him with “illegal activity,” but declined to elaborate.

It was two days before they returned to the city under armed guard. His arrest became news in all of the papers, but government officials never pursued the charges.

Meanwhile, Bodwell rented a room in a motel, paying the expenses of his own incarceration.

“That’s the way it’s done there,” he said. “I had to buy their breakfasts.”

It’s a concept he understands but has little experience trying to translate, he said.

“I don’t try to explain it to people,” he said.

dhartill@sunjournal.com