John Frum Village

At Lamakara, above Sulphur Bay, cane huts ring a ceremonial ground where flags rise on 15 February and barefoot ranks drill with wooden guns. The letters USA are painted in red on bare chests. Across the valley, Yasur rumbles; believers hold that John Frum lives inside the volcano.

John Frum is a living faith, and it is older than the clichés about it. The movement rose on Tanna in the late 1930s, before the vast American wartime presence, when the figure of John Frum called islanders back to their lands, their kava and their dancing against mission prohibition; the material abundance American servicemen later brought to the islands was folded into a faith already standing. Its holiest day is 15 February, when devotees from across Tanna gather at Lamakara for military-style drill blended with kastom dance, red crosses, raised flags and song. Followers hold that John Frum is a spirit who dwells in Yasur and moves between the volcano and America, and the movement has endured into settled institutions rather than fading as outsiders long predicted. Visits are arranged through local contacts, and the visit worth making is the one spent listening: these are beliefs a community holds seriously, not a show staged about the past.