Community Perspectives | Beacon Hill's Khmer Temple Featured in New Southeast Asian Refugee History Book

As Rosa Woolsey walked the lush grounds of Watt Dhammacakkaram, a Khmer Buddhist temple in Beacon Hill, she recalled what made the place so special to her. "I've moved homes, gone to different schools, but this temple has remained constant — more so than any other place," Woolsey said.

Watt Dhammacakkaram, or "Watt Chas" (Old Temple), as it's known by the region's Khmer community, is the oldest Khmer Buddhist Temple in Washington state. Perched on a hillside at the end of South Juneau Street, Woolsey considered the temple a focus site in a 4Culture internship report she wrote on culturally significant places in Beacon Hill.

Now, Watt Chas has been identified for its significance in another book.

On May 20, Washington state released a commemorative book, New Land: Southeast Asian Refugees Finding Home In Washington, in observation of the 50th year of Southeast Asian refugees resettling in the region. The book centers the oral histories of people throughout Washington who are Southeast Asian refugees or descendants of those who arrived from Southeast Asia between 1975 and the 1990s after fleeing from the North Vietnamese takeover of Vietnam, as well as political upheavals in Cambodia and Laos. Washington was one of the first states to accept Southeast Asian refugees, an issue important to then-Gov. Dan Evans.

The book includes 15 nonfiction stories, touching upon the first Vietnamese language newspaper in the state; Laotian and Cambodian communities who settled in Raymond and South Bend to work in the oyster and lumber industries; and Hmong flower vendors in Pike Place Market. One story highlights Watt Dhammacakkaram, and it's based upon an oral history by Woolsey, a second-generation Cambodian American whose Khmer mother, Hok Kim Em, arrived in Seattle in 1999 after marrying Ben Woolsey, a white person from the American South.

The History and Legacy of Watt Chas, Beacon Hill's "Old Temple"

The story of Watt Chas on Beacon Hill began in 1982 when a group of Cambodian American refugees, many of whom lived in Holly Park (now New Holly), created the Khmer Buddhist Society and gathered funds to purchase a two-story house on Beacon Hill. The effort was led by Hieam Oung, who had been Phnom Penh's mayor when the Khmer Rouge seized power.

Woolsey's uncle Larry Seng arrived in Seattle in 1988 after walking from Cambodia to Thailand and living in a refugee camp for four years. Woolsey said Seng attended the temple not long after he arrived in Seattle.

The temple experienced fires in 1991 and 2008, the latter of which forced the temple to close. Seng, who by then was working as an electrician at the Boeing Company, was encouraged by his mother (Rosa's grandmother), Mouy Taing, to lead a temple renewal effort in 2011. Watt Chas services began again in 2013. Seng has served as a board president and continues to be active at the temple.

Today, the temple continues to grow its footprint in Beacon Hill. It purchased an adjacent 1-acre lot, and seven monks live on the premises. One of them is Woolsey's uncle Hok Meng. Phun Nath, a monk at Watt Chas who facilitates meditation and Khmer language classes, said the temple offers spiritual services throughout the week.

Woolsey regularly attends Watt Chas with her family, but she doesn't often see other people her age. "Many of the [congregants] are older or are children," she said. Few people her age speak Khmer, which is used heavily by the monks who are recruited from Cambodia. Woolsey grew up speaking Khmer with her maternal grandmother who lives with her. The other language heard at the temple, Pali, is used for chanting.

New Land was published by Washington's Office of the Secretary of State and written by the state's chief historian, John Hughes, and state historian, Ed Echtle. Echtle reflected on his experience working on many oral histories for the book. "I came away [from the project] with a feeling that we're at the very beginning of telling the stories … due to the trauma suffered by [the refugees] any stories remain untold," he said, adding, "it's interesting to me how people navigat[e] those stories and try to bring them out in thoughtful ways that don't retraumatize."

Woolsey acknowledged a similar sentiment as a descendant of refugees. "I receive stories whenever [they] feel like telling [them] to me." She said she's grateful when the stories present themselves.

When the Khmer Rouge seized power in Cambodia, the regime killed 1.5 to 3 million people between 1975 and 1979. Among the groups targeted were people who practiced a religion, and Buddhist practices were shut down in Cambodia. Woolsey recalled that her mother, who was born in 1969, remembered going to temple before the Khmer Rouge, a practice that became unsafe after the takeover. "It is something that I think impact[s] Khmer Buddhist life today."

Today, about 180,000 Southeast Asian refugees and their descendants live in Washington state. Historians Hughes and Echtle indicated that state Rep. My-Linh Thai, who arrived as a refugee at 15, was involved in the book from its inception. Together, the team agreed to incorporate diverse stories of first-generation refugees, their descendants, and mixed-race and other intersectional experiences.

Woolsey, who said she identifies as mixed-race Cambodian American, said she looks racially ambiguous, and her name doesn't reflect a Cambodian origin. "When I was younger, I didn't identify with being Cambodian or Asian. I didn't know what to make of that," she said. "Since then, I've come to not discount my experience for not being an externally standardized experience of being Cambodian. There's no singular experience we should be working toward because that's just not the reality of how this works. I encourage people to believe in the validity of their own experiences."