Jackie Kennedy in Cambodia, 1967: a “private” trip with a political edge
On 2 November 1967, Jacqueline Kennedy landed in Phnom Penh. She was the widow of the president assassinated four years earlier and held no official post. Prince Norodom Sihanouk received her like a head of state anyway. Over one week, from Phnom Penh to Angkor, this pleasure trip eased relations between two countries that had not spoken for two years.
Jackie Kennedy arrives in Phnom Penh
The US Air Force plane from Bangkok was the first American aircraft to land in Cambodia since diplomatic relations were cut in May 1965.
On board was Jacqueline Kennedy, 38, whom the press called Jackie. Her husband, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, had been assassinated in Dallas in 1963. She no longer held any official role. Sihanouk nonetheless gave her the honours of a state visit.
Since 1965, Phnom Penh and Washington had been at odds. The prince denounced American incursions and defended a neutrality that was getting harder to hold. Jackie offered him another image of America, that of John Kennedy, whose memory he kept.
The stay, from 2 to 8 November, was officially private. Protocol and the presence of the international press said otherwise.
Sihanouk and the Sangkum: a fragile balance
In 1967, Cambodia lived under the Sangkum Reastr Niyum, the movement Sihanouk founded in 1955. The prince wanted to keep his country out of the two Cold War blocs. To the east, the Vietnam War was escalating. At home, political and social tensions were rising.
Receiving Jacqueline Kennedy let him show an independent, cultured, modern Cambodia. That did not mean rallying to Washington. Sihanouk meant to control the message and keep criticising American policy in the region.
Jackie Kennedy and Angkor: a dream born in books
Jacqueline Kennedy had dreamed of Angkor for a long time. A lover of art and history, she had worked at school on the memoirs of Zhou Daguan, the 13th-century Chinese traveller who described the Khmer capital. She told Sihanouk so in a letter of February 1967.
The temples were therefore no improvised society stop. They followed an old curiosity. After her return, she would again thank J. G. D’Arcy Paul for his English translation of Zhou Daguan’s text. Her interest in Khmer heritage did not end with the trip.
A speech rewritten before landing
Robert McNamara, the US Secretary of Defense and a friend of Jacqueline, had encouraged the idea of the trip as early as 1966. Organising it was delicate. Several figures accompanied her: David Ormsby-Gore, Lord Harlech, former British ambassador to Washington; Michael Forrestal, a former Kennedy adviser; and the journalist Charles Bartlett.
An incident was avoided before the plane even touched down. In his welcome speech, Sihanouk planned to say that the Vietnam War would not have happened had John Kennedy lived. Lord Harlech saw a risk of offending Lyndon Johnson. From the plane, a request for a change was radioed to the prince. He agreed to drop the line. Jacqueline added in return that her husband would have loved to discover Cambodia.
Every sentence carried weight. The “private” nature of the trip did not rule out hidden agendas or political talks.
Angkor Wat: time suspended
In Siem Reap, Jacqueline stayed at the royal residence. She toured the temples with, among others, Bernard-Philippe Groslier, the conservator of Angkor. At Angkor Wat, restoration work had temporarily uncovered some of the bas-relief galleries. She saw battles, gods, hells and paradises, the scenes that have fed so many accounts of Khmer civilisation.
Biographer Christopher Andersen describes a night walk, barefoot, among the stones. The episode is hard to document in detail. It still says something about the image this trip left behind: a woman famous the world over finding, among the monuments, a little freedom.
Phnom Penh: palaces, dances and modern Cambodia
The programme included the palaces of Phnom Penh, the prince’s collections of antiquities and the Sangkum permanent exhibition, where Sihanouk presented the achievements of his regime. Jacqueline was housed at Chamcar Mon, in a building designed by Vann Molyvann that had already been used for General de Gaulle’s visit in 1966.
The receptions gave the press strong images: the Valentino dress inspired by the sari, the conversations with the prince, the court ceremonies, the classical dance performances. A photograph in the Khmer press shows Jackie congratulating a young dancer under the eye of Queen Sisowath Kossamak. Cambodia’s living heritage was at the centre of an international encounter.
Lord Harlech, the rumours and the shadow side
Lord Harlech accompanied Jackie to Angkor. A former friend of the Kennedys, the British diplomat had recently been widowed. His closeness to her intrigued the columnists. The papers imagined a romance. Both publicly denied it.
Biographies published later give differing versions. Some rest on second-hand confidences gathered long after the events. What is documented has to be kept apart from what is reconstruction. In October 1968, Jacqueline married Aristotle Onassis. Lord Harlech remarried the following year.
The Vietnam War, always in the background
Between the beauty of the ceremonies and the violence of the region, the contrast never faded. A biographical account mentions a downed American plane and Jacqueline’s concern for prisoners. Sihanouk repeated his conviction: peace required an American withdrawal from Vietnam.
On 8 November, Michael Forrestal wrote to the State Department that the political talks had revealed nothing truly new. The visit nonetheless eased the atmosphere. In January 1968, Chester Bowles travelled to Phnom Penh. Diplomatic relations were officially restored in 1969. Jackie was not the only architect of that, but her stay was an important symbolic gesture.
Sihanoukville: a tribute to John Kennedy
In Sihanoukville, Jacqueline took part in a public tribute to John Kennedy. She unveiled a plaque and dedicated a street that now bears his name. For Sihanouk, the gesture set the late president apart from the policy of his successors. For Jackie, it reopened a recent wound: Dallas was only four years back.
The trip thus carried two stories. One was a country looking for its place among the powers. The other was a woman trying to live with a memory that had become public.
The 1967 images: a kingdom before the fall
The photographs of November 1967 show a kingdom that still received its guests with pomp and asserted its modernity through architecture, the arts and culture. Less than three years later, the coup of March 1970 overthrew Sihanouk. The civil war worsened. Phnom Penh fell to the Khmer Rouge in April 1975.
These images now carry a particular documentary value. Angkor Database stresses the importance of the Cambodian press archives, whose photographers too often remained anonymous. They make it possible to tell this trip other than through the Western gaze alone.
Sources
Angkor Database, “November 1967: Jackie K. Goes To Cambodia”, ADB Reference Studies #JK-NS4 (2021): angkordatabase.asia
Photographs: LIFE, 1967.
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