A bell rings. Men carrying thick bamboo poles as “rifles” with U.S.A. painted on their bare chests begin to march, in lockstep, toward a clearing in the forest. The man-made clearing is a rough opening meant to be a landing strip.
Awaiting the “soldiers” is a wooden replica of a light aircraft.
“On one side of the strip lies a control tower made of bamboo,” writes sapiens.org. “On the other sits a satellite dish built of mud and straw. Undeterred by the apparent lack of any actual aviation technology, some of the men light torches and place them alongside the runway. Others use flags to wave landing signals. Everyone raises their gaze to the sky in anticipation.”
The group is waiting — and have been since 1945.
While scenes like this have been reported by anthropologists, colonial explorers and other observers since the early 19th century, as Indigenous communities came into contact with American and Australian military personnel during the Second World War, “cargoism” — a religious movement among natives of the islands of Melanesia in the South Pacific — began to crop up.
The theology is simple enough: The practice of the cult centers on the worship of cargo.
As hundreds of thousands of American troops flooded the Pacific from the skies and seas during World War II, roughly 70 “cargo cults” began to spring up among the villages in the South Pacific.
In particular, on the remote island of Tanna in the South Pacific nation of Vanuatu, there’s the worship John Frum, an idealized American G.I. who communities believe will bring back radios, TVs, medicine, chocolate, trucks, boats, planes — and Coca-Cola.
“John promised he’ll bring planeloads and shiploads of cargo to us from America if we pray to him,” a village elder told Paul Raffaele of Smithsonian Magazine in 2006.
Anthropologist Kirk Huffman, who spent 17 years in Vanuatu, told the magazine: “You get cargo cults when the outside world, with all its material wealth, suddenly descends on remote, indigenous tribes.”
Many within the isolated community believed the endless supplies of goods were conjured up by magic.
According to the Smithsonian, local leaders say that John Frum first appeared one night in the late 1930s after an evening of heavy drinking.
“He was a white man who spoke our language, but he didn’t tell us then he was an American,” says Chief Kahuwya, leader of Yakel village, told the magazine.
During the war, thousands of American troops were dispatched to the New Hebrides, now known as Vanuatu, to build military bases at Port-Vila and on the island of Espíritu Santo. The building of hospitals, airstrips, roads, bridges and, of course, goods from PXs’, meant that John Frum, the messiah, had arrived.
By 1943, the movement’s growth had so alarmed members within the U.S. military command that Maj. Samuel Patten, aboard the USS Echo, was sent to Tanna to convince John Frum followers that, as his report put it, “the American forces had no connection with Jonfrum.”
Patten was unsuccessful.
By war’s end, as the venerated Americans quickly vanished, so too did their cargo. As the years passed, many cargo cults began to disappear after waiting in vain for the Americans to reappear — but not the John Frum movement.
For over half a century, villagers on Vanuatu have attempted to entice the American “god” to return by mimicking what they had observed in the American soldiers: marching up and down, raising flags, chanting anthems and signaling towards the sky, according to sapiens.org.
Members of the cult believe that such strange rituals made the cargo of goods arrive, and so, for over 80 years, local chiefs have organized ceremonies that imitate the American soldier.
“John promised you much cargo more than [80] years ago, and none has come,” Raffaele pointed out to Isaac, the chief of Tanna in 2006. “So why do you keep faith with him? Why do you still believe in him?”
“You Christians have been waiting 2,000 years for Jesus to return to earth,” Isaac rejoined, “and you haven’t given up hope.”
Claire Barrett is the Strategic Operations Editor for Sightline Media and a World War II researcher with an unparalleled affinity for Sir Winston Churchill and Michigan football.
