Working in the Printery

14. Mit Yon: identity unknown

15. Lin: Sok Knol

Working in the Cookhouse

16. Hul: identity unknown

17. Phon: identity unknown

Working in the Infirmary

18. Mit But: Kheang Sim Hon

19. Ing Chheng Im

Deputy Administrator Office 100

20. Mit Sdaong: identity unknowna

Undefined Tasks

21. Mit Yin: identity unknown

22. Komar (young man) Vung: identity unknown

Notes

Notes

Chapter One

1 See Ben Kiernan, How Pol Pot Came to Power (London, 1985; hereafter HPP), and other materials in Bibliographic Essay, pp. 243ff., and Ben Kiernan, The Pol Pot Regime (New Haven, 1995).

2 I refer especially to Nate Thayer’s October 1997 interview with Pol Pot himself, summarized in Thayer, “Day of Reckoning,” Far Eastern Economic Review (FEER), October 30, 1997; the unpublished interviews with former Red Khmer cadre conducted since 1995 by David Ashley; and Stephen Heder’s unpublished interviews with Ieng Sary and Mey Mann. I am grateful to Ashley and Heder for transcripts of their interviews and to Thayer for extensive conversations about his encounter with Pol Pot.

3 Before he fell from power in 1997, Pol Pot toyed with the idea of presiding over a biographical project that would, he hoped, secure his place in history. According to Nate Thayer (personal communication), he recruited a young Khmer Rouge cadre, Tep Kunnal, for the project and over several months Kunnal filled nine notebooks with data provided by his mentor. The notebooks, he told Thayer, were accidentally destroyed during the government assault on the Red Khmer base of Anlong Veng in 1998, shortly before Pol Pot died.

4 See David P. Chandler, The Tragedy of Cambodian History: Politics, War, and Revolution Since 1945 (New Haven, Conn., 1991).

5 See François Ponchaud, “Social Change in the Vortex of Revolution,” in Karl Jackson, ed., Cambodia, 1975—1978: Rendezvous with Death (Princeton, N.J., 1989); Soth Polin, “La diabolique douceur de Pol Pot,” Le Monde Diplomatique, May 18, 1980; and Roger Normand, “At the Khmer Rouge School: The Teachings of Chairman Pol Pot,” Nation, September 3, 1990.

Chapter Two

1 See U.S. Foreign Broadcast Information Service (hereafter FBIS), Daily Reports, October 4, 1978, and Nate Thayer, “My Education: How Saloth Sar Became Pol Pot,” FEER, October 30, 1997, where Pol Pot insisted on a January 1925 birthdate: “January—I remember because my mother wrote it in chalk on the wall of the house, next to the cupboard.”

2 According to Saloth Sar’s older brother Loth Suong, one sister died in childbirth and two brothers died before 1975. Another brother, Saloth Chhay, died in the exodus from Phnom Penh in April 1975. Saloth Sar’s given name means “white” in Khmer and may have been chosen because of his relatively light complexion.

3 Author’s interviews with Tap Meak (February 1990), Loth Suong, and Suon Kaset Sokho (October 1987, May 1989, June 1990). After 1975, Meak was evacuated to Battambang and did not survive the Democratic Kampuchea period. Like Sar’s other relatives, she enjoyed no special privileges at that time. (Youk Chhang’s interview with Saloth Roeung, March 1997).