The World of Sergeant-Major Bungkus: Two Interviews with Benedict Anderson and Arief Djati

Abstract

In 2002, Benedict Anderson and Arief Djati twice interviewed Sergeant-Major Bungkus, a career soldier in the Indonesian military, who on October 1, 1965 led one of the squads sent to arrest or kill the seven generals who had allegedly plotted a coup against President Sukarno. Having survived thirty-four years on death row after he was convicted for his participation in the G30S operation, Pak Bungkus is one of the few living witnesses to those events. The interviews have been translated, synthesized, and annotated by Anderson and Arief Djati.