Does Jon Frum Live in Valdez?
Maybe because I was enjoying the warmest Memorial Day weekend in memory, my thoughts during a recent break in Valdez turned to a minor new scientific observation relating to the tropics---but wended from there back to an irreverent observation about the Port Valdez skyline.
The minor observation had to do with the beginnings of the so-called cargo cults. Members of these groups believe in a very contemporary type of sympathetic magic. In effect, once the soon-to-be believers observed that incredible kinds and amounts of material wealth arrived in airplanes, they set about building mockups of the conveyances to attract some real ones. The idea, perhaps, is like setting out a decoy for the goose that lays golden eggs. The ensuing customs are the delight of TV documentary producers, who love to show respectful people surrounding a scrapwood simulacrum of an old DC-4.
However, cargo cults are also extremely interesting to cultural anthropologists, who otherwise rarely have a chance to see the beginnings of religious practices and beliefs. Cargo cults sprang up in many places but over only a fairly short period, when cargo planes began to bear wealth out of the skies over New Guinea, New Caledonia, and other places hitherto protected from much pressure to join the modern world.
The general assumption has been that all the cargo cults came about in the 1940s, while World War II brought snarling hordes of freight planes to remote corners of the globe. However, the small island of Tanna, in the South Pacific oceanic nation of Vanuatu, now offers historic evidence of a prewar sprouting of the belief. Tanna has the Jon Frum movement.
More than a quarter of Tanna's 20,000 inhabitants give "custom" as their religion when they fill out census forms. The Jon Frum organization falls somewhere between a religion and a nationalist political movement, but it began before the war. According to elders' memories, the missionaries who were trying to improve islanders' morals---especially as regards their great fondness for an inebriating local drink known as kava---made the mistake of banishing the worst troublemakers to work duty on other islands. The work was where Americans were building ports and stations. There in plenty were the corrupting items of material wealth against which the missionaries had preached. The returning troublemakers were more worldly wise and wealthy. Their spiritual descendants still perform military drills, with makeshift Yankee uniforms and carved wooden rifles, though nobody remembers who Jon Frum really was.
They're sure he'll return on the 15th of February, though. Which year is a different matter, and an unknown one, but they're positive about the date. It is perhaps too easy to dismiss the cargo cults as quaint or primitive or superstitious, the silly practices of backward people. On that opinion, a couple of points might be made. First, whenever tourists visit Tanna, they want to see the Jon Frummers in action. They visit the museum-cum-church with its ritual objects, such as pictures of astronauts, and they watch the drill team exercise. Then they make donations.
The other point I credit to a friend who shared an insight about the Sun Dome, a major- league sports facility constructed in and by the city of St. Petersburg, Florida. It is infrastructure ready and waiting for the right team, according to the St. Pete Chamber of Commerce. Baseball's National League gave the Marlins to Miami anyhow. "Look," said my friend. "This is what happens when you really do build the field of dreams. Build it and they will come? Nope. This is Florida's cargo cult."
At the other corner of the continent, we Alaskans can't giggle much over Floridians' magical thinking. After all, near the site of Old Valdez stands a mighty but empty grain terminal, its impressive silos offering a windbreak for nesting seabirds...We built it, but the ships didn't come.
