This is February 15, John Frum Day, on the remote island of
Tanna in the South Pacific nation of Vanuatu. On this holiest of
days, devotees have descended on the village of Lamakara from all
over the island to honor a ghostly American messiah, John Frum.
“John promised he’ll bring planeloads and shiploads of cargo to us
from America if we pray to him,” a village elder tells me as he
salutes the Stars and Stripes. “Radios, TVs, trucks, boats,
watches, iceboxes, medicine, Coca-Cola and many other wonderful
things.”

The island’s John Frum movement is a classic example of what
anthropologists have called a “cargo cult”—many of which sprang up
in villages in the South Pacific during World War II, when hundreds
of thousands of American troops poured into the islands from the
skies and seas. As anthropologist Kirk Huffman, who spent 17 years
in Vanuatu, explains: “You get cargo cults when the outside world,
with all its material wealth, suddenly descends on remote,
indigenous tribes.” The locals don’t know where the foreigners’
endless supplies come from and so suspect they were summoned by
magic, sent from the spirit world. To entice the Americans back
after the war, islanders throughout the region constructed piers
and carved airstrips from their fields. They prayed for ships and
planes to once again come out of nowhere, bearing all kinds of
treasures: jeeps and washing machines, radios and motorcycles,
canned meat and candy.