In 1984, Schanberg’s book about his experiences alongside Dith Pran were turned in the acclaimed film “The Killing Fields”, which is also noted for its use of Khmer Rouge labor camp survivor Haing S. Ngor in an Oscar-winning performance as Dith. The pair took refuge in the French Embassy but Dith Pran was forced to leave and sent into the countryside.
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Schanberg returned to NY, and while taking off time from his work at the newspaper, helped Dith’s wife and children resettle in San Francisco.
He was evacuated by truck to Thailand a fortnight later and filed his despatches about the fall of the capital and the massacres that took place, going into uncompromising detail about streets being littered with bodies and ravaged by war.
In 1971, he was the South Asia correspondent for The New York Times. Schanberg was able to flee, but his assistant fled the guerrillas. The newspaper cited Charles Kaiser, a friend and former Times reporter who said Schanberg had a heart attack on Tuesday.
Wave after wave of refugees followed, ultimately leading to the death of an estimated two million plus people over the next four four years from starvation, murder and slavery.
The Times reported Schanberg died Saturday in Poughkeepsie, New York.
“What propelled both of us was the human impact – the 10-year-old orphans in uniforms, carrying rifles nearly as tall as themselves; the amputees lying traumatized in filthy, overcrowded hospitals; the skeletal infants rasping and spitting as they died while you watched in the all-too-few malnutrition clinics; and the sleepless, unpaid soldiers taking heavy fire at the front lines, depending on the “magic” amulets they wore around their necks while their generals took siestas after long lunches several miles behind the fighting”.
In 1975, Schanberg and Dith Pran ignored directives from Times editors to evacuate and stayed in Cambodia as nearly all Western diplomats and journalists fled. Ngor, a Cambodian who also survived the horrors, won an Academy Award for best supporting actor.
He married Janice Sakofsky in 1967.
“I’m a very lucky man to have had Pran as my reporting partner and even luckier that we came to call each other brother”, Mr. Schanberg said after Dith died in 2008.
“His mission became trying to tell the rest of the world what was happening to his people”, Schanberg said.
Along with the Pulitzer, Schanberg was awarded two George Polk awards, two Overseas Press Club awards and the Sigma Delta Chi prize for distinguished journalism.
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He added: “My reporting could not have been done without him”.
