After World War II Vietnam suffered from a civil war and when the US troops took to chase the VIetnamese who were refuging in Cambodia, Cambodia cut of ties with the US. This left Pran without a job and he took to work with a film crew and on a hotel.As Lon Nol seized power in Cambodia his forces and those of Communist group Khmer Rouge started war in Cambodia. Pran then left with his family to Phnom Penh and started working for the New York Times as a guide and interpreter for the journalists. This is where he met one of the most important people in his life,  Sydney Schanberg. As the Khmer Rouge started to win the war Dith helped his family escape the U.S but he stayed behind to report on the new regime. The Khmer Rouge start killling millions of Cambodians. Sydney escaped Cambodia but Pran was forced to stay behind. He was forced to go to a village and harvest rice while being treated brutally and harshly. As the years dragged on this treatment continued. Finally Vietnamese forces invaded Cambodia and defeated the Khmer Rouge. At this point Pran went back to his hometown. There he was made an administrative leader, but he escaped the village when the Vietnamese found out he was once a reporter. Pran and other fugitives went on a sixty mile journey that ended on the border with Thai. He entered the refugee camp and with the help of an American relief officer he was able to contact Sydney. Sydney then helped him move to the US where he was re-united with his family, given a job at the New York Times, and he became a US citizen in 1986. Pran then worked to help victims of the Cambodian genocide and to bring the Khmer Rouge to justice. His wife and him started the Dith Pran Holocaust Awareness Project to reunite victims and their family members. He wrote a book "Children of Cambodia's Killing Fields: Memoirs by Survivors", which outlined the story of survivors of the Khmer Rouge regime. Pran died on March 30, 2008 in  New Brunswick, N.J. due to pancreatic cancer.

Pran was born on September 27, 1942 in Siem Reap, Cambodia. He grew up in a home distant from all the problems troubling his home country. At the time Japan occupied French Indochina Cambodia. Pran grew up near the temples of Angkor Wat with his 2 sister and 3 brothers.He learned French in the local schools and he picked up English on his own. His fluency in the language allowed him to become a interpreter for  U.S. Military Assistance Command in Cambodia.