Archived Site: Jonestown Survivor

Information Concerning this Archived Site

Source: https://jonestownsurvivor.com (Inactive)

This is the archive of a large website of articles and blogs published in conjunction with the book, Jonestown Survivor: An Insider’s Look. The book and all the material in this archive were written by Laura Johnston Kohl, a member of Peoples Temple who survived the tragedy in Jonestown by being in Guyana’s capital city of Georgetown on 18 November 1978.

Following the twentieth anniversary of the Jonestown tragedy, Ms. Johnston Kohl became a prolific writer and active public speaker, work she continued to do until shortly before her death on 19 November 2019. She also made herself available to family members of those who perished in Guyana and scholars who try to understand the calamity of the ending. Finally, she was a generous contributor of articles and remembrances for the Alternative Considerations site, all of which may be found here.

In the interest of preserving the information from her site for future generations of Jonestown scholars and researchers, the managers of this site obtained permission from Laura’s husband Ron Kohl to archive her work in its entirety. Both the archive and the book itself are published with his permission.

JONESTOWN SURVIVOR – Writes Some Tankas

I am an educator in my life, other than speaking and writing about Peoples Temple and being a Jonestown Survivor.

In one of my recent classes, my good friend Mel Takahara came and presented a few form of poetry to my students. He introduced a Tanka. A Tanka is a 31-syllable, 5-line poem, with syllables 5-7-5-7-7. My students have had very tough lives with some of them homeless, some in and out of foster homes during their whole lives, and many other painful and difficult life experiences. They wrote amazing Tankas, which my friend will publish for them.

Here are some of the Tankas I wrote:

Trust is what I need
I can not live without it
Live up to your word
Friendly and warm isn’t enough
There’s no friendship without trust

Your life defines you
Actions are everything
Words are meaningless
How are you going to act?
That will tell me who you are

It takes a village
To love and raise our children
Where are the villagers?
We are not doing our jobs
Our children need parenting

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