Dith Pran, who died in New Jersey yesterday at 65, was the Cambodian photojournalist whose story was told in Roland Joffe’s award-winning film “The Killing Fields” (1984).

With Sydney Schanberg, then a foreign correspondent with the New York Times, Dith covered the civil war in Cambodia between 1972 and 1975, a very dangerous assignment. Dith worked as assistant to Mr. Schanberg, whose dispatches earned him a Pulitzer Prize in 1976. Mr. Schanberg accepted the prize on behalf of Dith as well.

In April 1975 the two journalists decided to remain behind in the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh, to report on the city’s fall to the communist party, the Khmer Rouge, who over the next four years were responsible for the deaths of some two million of their compatriots.

Dith saved Mr. Schanberg and two other journalists from almost certain execution, but was then unable to get out of the country himself; he spent the next four and a half years as a forced labourer.

“The Killing Fields” — inspired by Mr. Schanberg’s book “The Death and Life of Dith Pran” (1980) — made Dith famous, and he used his celebrity to publicize the atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge in his homeland.

“I am a one-person crusade,” he once said. “I must speak for those who did not survive and for those who still suffer … Like one of my heroes, Elie Wiesel, who alerts the world to the horrors of the Jewish holocaust, I try to awaken the world to the holocaust of Cambodia, for all tragedies have universal implications.”

Dith Pran was born into a middle-class Cambodian family on September 27, 1942, one of six children. His father was a road-building supervisor in the northwest of the country, near the 12thcentury ruins of Angkor Wat.

By the time he had left school, Dith was proficient in both English and French, and initially he found work as a translator for the U.S. Military Assistance Command before being offered a job in a hotel popular with tourists visiting Angkor Wat. By this time the conflict in Vietnam was spilling over into neighboring Cambodia. The Khmer Rouge, which initially enjoyed considerable support among the Cambodian people, was soon at war with the government in Phnom Penh; the tourist industry collapsed, and Dith moved to the capital, where he offered himself as an interpreter and guide to foreign journalists.

He met Mr. Schanberg in 1972 and immediately proved himself an invaluable asset. Not only was he adept at negotiating roadblocks and other difficulties, he also appeared to have an instinctive understanding of the reporter’s requirements, and the two men became close friends as well as colleagues. By the following year the New York Times was paying Dith a retainer, guaranteeing his exclusive services.

With Dith’s help, Mr. Schanberg was soon reporting on issues such as the huge extent of the refugee problem in Cambodia, the lack of hospital facilities and, on one occasion, the deaths of 150 townspeople after an accidental raid by an American bomber on Neak Luong.

In April 1975, however, it became clear that Phnom Penh would fall to the Khmer Rouge, and the American government announced the closure of its embassy and the evacuation of its citizens. Dith’s wife and four children were among those brought out of the country on April 12, but he remained behind with Mr. Schanberg. Five days later the Cambodian government caved in to the Khmer Rouge. On the same morning Dith and Mr. Schanberg were pursuing a story at a hospital when Mr. Schanberg was arrested — along with two other journalists, Al Rockoff and the British Jon Swain — by Khmer Rouge soldiers.

Convinced that the reporters would be executed, Dith spent two hours pleading for their lives, claiming that they were French and therefore neutral in the conflict.

The ruse was a success, and Dith and Mr. Schanberg then took refuge in the French embassy. But a few days later the Khmer Rouge insisted that all Cambodians sheltering there leave immediately. Swain and Rockoff attempted to forge a French passport for Dith, but failed.

Dith thus became one of the millions displaced by the new regime, under its leader Pol Pot, as it pursued the goal of dismantling traditional Cambodian society. Professional people, Buddhist and Christian monks, dissenters of any stripe were systematically eliminated. Schools and factories were closed. The year 1975 was proclaimed “Year Zero.” All people would now become peasants.

To survive in this atmosphere Dith reinvented himself as an illiterate taxi-driver, and went to live in a village where, for more than two years, he worked 14 hours a day as an agricultural labourer.

He arrived in San Francisco in October 1979, where he was reunited with his wife, Ser Moeun, and their three sons and one daughter. The family then moved to New York, where Dith began a career as a photographer with the New York Times. He became an American citizen in 1986.

The film which told his story won three Oscars, and starred Sam Waterston as Mr. Schanberg. Dith was portrayed by Haing Ngor, who won an Academy Award for best supporting actor. The picture not only made Dith a celebrity, it also cemented his status as an authority on Cambodia, and he gave countless interviews in America and around the world, as well as lectures to universities, schools, and other bodies.

In 1985 he was appointed a Goodwill Ambassador by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. He testified on Cambodia before the Senate and House of Representatives sub-committee on East Asian and Pacific Affairs, and was founder and president of the Dith Pran Holocaust Awareness Project. He also compiled “Children of Cambodia’s Killing Fields: Memoirs by Survivors” (1997).

In January Pran Dith was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He was divorced from Ser Meoun, who survives him together with their children. He is also survived by his second wife, Kim DePaul, and by his companion, Bette Parslow.