Pacific Island Cult Celebrates 50 Years of Worshipping America

LAMAKARA, Vanuatu — As global public opinion sours toward the U.S., Americans weary of the relentless negativity can take heart from an exotic corner of the South Pacific.

America's standing in the world may have plummeted under President Bush, but a bizarre cargo cult in the Vanuatu island nation holds the U.S. in god-like esteem.

The Jon Frum movement celebrated the 50th anniversary of its founding yesterday with a lavish feast in which village men dressed up as American soldiers and marched in front of a giant American flag on a bamboo pole.

Miniature U.S. flags festooned trees lining the black sand parade ground that forms the focus of Lamakara village, the headquarters of the cult, on the jungle island of Tanna.

Older men dressed as officers marshaled the crowd of several thousand cult devotees, while 50 young men shouldered their bamboo rifles and came to attention in a perfectly orchestrated drill.

The letters "USA" were daubed across their chests and backs in red paint as they paraded beneath a relentless tropical sun, a drill sergeant barking orders in Bislama, Vanuatu Pidgin English.

A tin band and small boys with bamboo flutes played "The Star Spangled Banner" against a background of roars from nearby Mount Yasur, a live volcano in which the spirit of Jon Frum is said to live. "For us, America is very good," said village chief Isaac Wan, 67, the leader of the cargo cult, barefoot but dressed in a smart American naval officer's uniform and sitting under a large U.S. flag.

"There's a friendship between Tanna people and America from the war. When they came here looking for people to help them build airstrips and carry their supplies, we gave them 1,000 men."

The origins of the cult date back to the 1930s, when Britain and France jointly ran what was then the colony of New Hebrides.

Tanna's inhabitants bridled at colonial rule and the missionaries who badgered them to embrace Christianity, stop drinking the mildly narcotic drink kava, and abandon other customary ways.

Village elders tell of how a mysterious outsider came to their forbears in a series of apparitions, telling them to go back to their traditional ways. The idea of a messiah-like outsider was given a huge boost during World War II, when hundreds of Tannese men were recruited by the Americans to build roads, airstrips, and bases.

They were impressed by the large amounts of cargo — tanks, weapons, medicine, and food — brought by the American military. The shadowy spirit figure they already believed in gradually assumed a name and a nationality — Jon Frum is believed to be a contraction of "John from America," a reference perhaps to a soldier who showed particular generosity.