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The Jonestown Institute
Laura Johnson Kohl (photo on the Guianese passport) is one of the few tens to be part of the group that survived
Sunday, November 18, marks the 40th anniversary of the notorious Jonestown massacre, which left more than 900 people dead in a colony led by Christian sect leader Jim Jones.
Before the anniversary date, a survivor – Laura Johnston Kohl – explained to the BBC how she had narrowly escaped death and how she and others had rebuilt their lives in recent decades.
Warning: This article contains graphic images of death
Having grown up in Washington DC in the 1950s and 1960s, Laura Johnson was no stranger to activism.
In 1970, when she joined the Temple of Peoples in California, at the age of 22, she was already protesting the Vietnam War, working with the Black Panthers, and attending the famous 1969 Woodstock Festival.
"My life was in turmoil, my marriage had failed and I was looking for a place to do politics in a safer environment after a series of bad decisions," she recalls.
She attended a few meetings at the group's headquarters in Redwood Valley, northern California, and was quickly convinced by their ideals of benevolence and racial equality.
Jim Jones, a charismatic Christian preacher, established the People's Temple as a religious group in a religion in Indianapolis in 1956 before settling in California a decade later.
Jones spoke of an impending nuclear apocalypse and felt that his separatist "socialist apostolic" community could prosper as a result.
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Jim Jones (left) photographed with his wife Marceline
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The Jonestown Institute
Jim Jones (left) photographed with a church member and his family
The group, though religious, was based on socialist ideals – providing health care and other social services to its various members.
"It was the community I was looking for, I was looking for equality and justice, and there were people from all walks of life and all races," said Laura.
- Look: Why have more than 900 people died because of this man?
- Guyana is considering the future of the massacre site
"In 1974, the leader of the sect Jim Jones said that he wanted us to find a place away from all the drugs and alcohol in America," she recalls.
"We found Guyana, in South America, an ideal country to settle in. It was a beautiful country, with isolated areas that we could populate."
In 1977, Laura and hundreds of other people uprooted their lives to relocate to the agricultural project of the People's Temple, known as Jonestown, after the name of its rulers.
"I had no worries about moving there – I was adventurous and excited to be able to live in the rainforest," she says.
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Claire Janaro via Jonestown Institute
Group members and their friends are photographed in 1975 at Redwood Valley Ranch
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FBI
An article on the temple, which was to appear in the summer of 1977, accelerated relocation
The "socialist paradise" abroad would allow Jones and his group to practice their way of life away from the intense media surveillance that began to accumulate in California.
But it was not the complete paradise that we had promised them.
The colony, located in northern French Guiana, was extraordinarily remote, but had agricultural problems that prevented it from being self-sufficient.
The members lived together in small communal homes and reported having worked long hours in the stifling heat of their increasingly politicized daily lives.
Laura lived on the main Jonestown site until October 1978.
"My work there was meaningful and rewarding," she recalls, "the Peoples Temple people were the ones I wanted to live with all my life.
"These were wonderful people." Other survivors might say differently, but for me, I was delighted. "It was not an unfortunate part of my life."
At the end of October, Jones asked Laura to move to Georgetown – the Guianese capital, a 24-hour boat ride – to work at the church headquarters.
She thinks her relocation is Jones' calculated maneuver, prompted by a close examination and an imminent visit by California Congressman Leo Ryan.
Jim Jones watched the fanatics [like Laura – people who would speak positively about People’s Temple] and stacked the bridge in Georgetown for Congressman Ryan's visit, "she says.
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The vast majority of Jonestown residents were African American
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Claire Janaro via Jonestown Institute
More than 300 children were killed during the November 18, 1978 massacre
The politician was leading an investigative expedition to the complex after family members in the United States expressed fear that their loved ones would be held against their will.
In a highly publicized case, parents transferred from the child named John Victor Stoen – whom Jones claimed to have fathered – publicly fought for custody.
And in the meantime, Laura remembers: "Jim Jones' state of mind was deteriorating and the Jonestown experience was starting to fail."
"People accused Jim Jones of kidnapping their children, and his secretaries had escaped with outrageous information about what was going on."
In May 1978, a close associate of Jones, Deborah Layton Blakey, escaped to Georgetown to seek refuge at the US embassy.
She submitted an affidavit that spoke of the "tyranny" of the Messianic Jones, who would broadcast sermons on loudspeakers for hours, devoured by conspiracy theories about the US government, defectors and concerned parents.
She also reported that pregnant residents suffered from food shortages and sometimes suffered from diseases such as diarrhea.
"Jonestown was not built for so many people – we were 1,000 – and we were not autonomous. Jim Jones felt pressured, "recalls Laura.
"His addiction and personality disorders were getting worse, he was less and less able to function."
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FBI
Recovered photograph shows stuffed animals made by Jonestown residents
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An image of the FBI taken after the massacre shows the scale of the Jonestown site
Survivors recalled "sleepless nights", sometimes weekly, in which Jones reportedly declared a security crisis.
Sometimes they were mock collective suicides in which followers, including children, queued and drank a poisoned liquid, but were told that it was a test of loyalty.
When Congressman Ryan visited a delegation in November, he brought concerned relatives of Temple members and journalists to document the trip.
After initial resistance, the group was allowed access to the site and guided tours presenting a rather pleasant portrait of daily life.
Charles Krause, a Washington Post reporter on a trip, recalls: "Contrary to what the" concerned parents "told us, no one seemed to starve – everyone seemed healthy."
The group spent the night outside the compound and returned the next day. At least a dozen people got in touch with the group during their stay.
While the delegation was waiting for their return flight, a cohort of gunmen from the Temple ambushed the group and opened fire, killing five people, including Congressman Ryan.
Back on the site, Jones simultaneously urged his more than 900 supporters to commit suicide, warning that the Guyanese army would invade and take their children because of the firing on the landing strip.
Tubs of fruit punch laced with cyanide were mixed and distributed, as during rehearsals.
"Jim Jones was a crook, he made everyone feel that he was their father," says Laura about the leader.
"He would say to them," You can not go back, you do not have money, "which was true, they put everything in the church.
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Three journalists and a defector were also killed in the ambush on the Kaituma Port landing strip.
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Pressures were put on the group to commit a "revolutionary suicide" with a cyanide drink Flavor Aid
"They feared the repercussions of the death of the congressman," she said. "He lied to them every day, he fed them paranoia, they had no recourse."
"Everyone is dead"
Back at the headquarters of Guyana, 240 km away, members were informed of the order.
Sharon Amos, secretary of Jim Jones, received on the radio a message sent to Georgetown, San Francisco and Redwood Valley, "recalls Laura.
He said: "Everyone in Jonestown is dying or is dead. All others must commit suicide in a revolutionary way right now. We are all doing it right now. "
Laura says that two of Jones' children, who were part of the temple's basketball team in the capital, refused to follow the instructions and asked the other branches not to take it into account.
She had left the building when the message had been received and returned to search for the Guyanese National Defense Forces carrying the body bags for the secretary and her children.
"It's hard to know what would have happened if I and the others in Georgetown had received these instructions," she says. "We had options out there – you can walk down the street and see people, get in a car or go to an embassy."
"I think if I was in Jonestown and I saw 900 people I loved making a choice, I can not imagine wanting to survive that."
Laura says that at headquarters, they began to hear about the death toll in Jonestown: 300, then 600 dead.
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It took the authorities days to fully realize the magnitude of the death toll
"We were all devastated, we were crying, as I still cry now, I was in a mess, many of us were inconsolable," she says.
"Some people have gone out to try to identify some people."
"Their bodies were left outside, in the middle of the rainforest, in a foreign country, everything that could be botched was botched, there is no real way to know who died how. was horrible. "
The total number of deaths, including the runway killings and Jones himself, amounted to 918 people.
Krause, who survived the ambush and was the first licensed journalist at the scene of the massacre, said that even the dogs and the Jonestown chimpanzee died alongside the locals.
"I realized that Jones had no intention of leaving anything, not even the animals, to testify to the ultimate horror. There were to be no survivors," writes he soon after in the Washington Post.
Prior to the events of September 11, 2001, Jonestown was the largest incident of intentional death of civilians in American history.
Laura returned to the United States at the end of November 1978 and returned to the community of People's Temple in California – a decision for which she says she is not afraid of anything.
"It was my family. I lived with them for eight years, I knew them so intimately, "she says. "I was never scared Jim Jones was the only one to be invested in the dead."
"We had gone through this collective trauma together, and it made sense to go through healing together.
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Heaps of passports of victims photographed after the massacre
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FBI
Reels of audio broadcast by Jones were seized as a result
"My mother and sister could not understand how I had entered the Temple, how I had stayed there … they could not get it, they could not grasp the loss. "
After a year of returning to the People's Temple, Laura joined another community where she met her husband and lived for a decade, where they had a son.
"Then I said," I'm done, I want to become an adult now. I went back to school and started teaching in 1995, "says Laura.
& # 39; No closure & # 39;
After avoiding talking about this traumatic experience for nearly two decades, Laura finally met the survivors of the temple for the first time in 1998.
"There was no forum for negative discussions so far," she says. "Twenty years later, we could finally get into a circle and have a conversation about what happened."
The trauma of working with the minority who lived became traumatic and overwhelming, so during meetings, she was surprised to meet people she did not understand.
The birthday – November 18 – has become a day for her and others to honor the more than 900 lives lost.
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Laura Johnson Kohl
Laura (left) photographed with her co-survivor Claire Janaro
"Meeting these other people for these birthdays has helped rebuild my life – the reality is that I'm not just a Laura Kohl, I'm Laura Kohl who went to the People's Temple, which has survived the People's Temple and continues to kick his ass "says.
"It's so much a part of me, I'm who I am because I survived the People's Temple, that drives me every day."
"There is no closure for Jonestown – it's not fixable," she says.
"I could hate Jim Jones, but then what, he's already dead, there's no point living with hate.
"Instead, I'm informing people about sects.I talk a lot about making your own decisions."
"A big dysfunctional family"
Decades later, this Sunday's memorial will bring together survivors and their loved ones for the first time.
"We are a big, dysfunctional family, regardless of whether you were sued against Jim Jones or someone else on the last day, we were survivors and we were successful," he said. she declared.
"We are here 40 years later and it's something to celebrate."
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The Jonestown Institute
A memorial at Evergreen Cemetery in Oakland, California – the burial site of over 400 unclaimed bodies
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Jonestown survivors and their friends gathered for a 38th anniversary event
"Sometimes when we come together, people talk or sing songs – it's a sacred space and time, we forget that there's another world," Laura says.
"All the survivors show that we can do it without Jim Jones, and we do not miss him.
"Now, I'm sad to have lost good friends, and I'm sad that some of the best people I've ever had in my life, people who are so committed that they lost their lives.
"I have seen an absolutely fantastic community of all races, all walks of life, all socio-economic levels and we have done a remarkable job in creating this community for 1,000 people," she says. "This type of community can exist, it does not depend on Jim Jones, it depends on people really committed.
"It gives me a lot of hope, it makes me think that wonderful people can do wonderful things, I'm always an activist, I know we can make a difference, I've seen and I do not know. Do not give up. "
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