With these research field notes, I share the oral sources collected during my dissertation on contemporary Indonesian history as well as the questioning of their collection and use. Based on direct witnesses and actors’ testimonies, particularly those related to the different systems of incarceration developed by successive governments since 1942, this oral corpus represents a significant contribution in terms of data facing the lack of archives. How to make history with the oral sources, especially the traumatic ones, is one of the questions I would like to share here.