Source: www.smithsonianmag.com
TANNA, VANATU, February 2006: Every year, February 15 is John Frum Day on the remote island of Tanna in the South Pacific nation of Vanuatu. On this day, devotees descend on the village of Lamakara from all over the island to honor an American messiah, called by the locals “John Frum.”
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.
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.” To this day, many villagers pray to John Frum, and the cult has even priests, a few village elders that claim to be closer to their protector and preach John Frum will return soon.
Although almost all the cargo cults have disappeared over the decades, the John Frum movement has endured.