OAKLAND, Calif. -- Twenty years ago, 912 people died in a South American jungle in a mass murder-suicide ordered by Peoples Temple leader Jim Jones. On a quiet hillside here, survivors met to remember Jonestown.
"The Peoples Temple members were the salt of the earth. They were not crazy people. They were not bizarre people," said Jynona Norwood, who lost 27 members of her family in 1978 and has organized a memorial service like the one Wednesday every year since."The people of Jonestown went to Guyana to live, not to die."
Norwood, now a pastor in Los Angeles, recalled how members of her family were inspired by Jones' messages of racial harmony and social justice. She refused to join the temple, however, and went into hiding with her young son Ed, who had become an enthusiastic follower of Jones.
When reports of beatings and forced donations surfaced, Jones moved his church from San Francisco to the jungles of Guyana.
Leslie Wilson followed him.
"The people in Jonestown had a vision, had a dream," she said. "We were just duped."
Wilson described how she and eight others escaped Nov. 18, 1978 -- hours before the suicides -- by pretending to go on a picnic.
They traveled 37 miles to the town of Matthew's Ridge.
While the picnickers were walking to freedom, things were spiraling toward tragedy in Jonestown.
The suicide was preceded by a visit from U.S. Rep. Leo Ryan, who had arrived in Jonestown to investigate complaints from relatives that people were being held there against their will.
Some left with Ryan, but they were ambushed at a small airstrip. The congressman and four others were killed.
Sensing the deaths spelled doom for himself and his community, Jones told his followers that night: "To die in revolutionary suicide is to live forever."
They started with the babies, using syringes to squirt cyanide-laced punch into their mouths. Then the adults drank the lethal mix. Some protested. A few were able to escape into the jungle. Some were shot to death by armed guards ringing the camp.
Jones' son, Steve, who was away with the camp basketball team during the suicides, described his recent visit to Jonestown, now virtually obliterated by time.
"I came out of there reminded that those people had always been with me," he said. "I believe that a piece of them is with me, that I carry a piece of their souls, as does everyone here."