But it wasn’t just the magic of telephones, fans, canned food and other cargo arriving from crucifixes in the sky that surprised them. Unlike the French and British who had colonized the area (then known as the New Hebrides), the American soldiers were respectful. They gave the people uniforms, learned their names, trained them and paid them well. They also showed them how American soldiers of all races worked together as equals.

“The Americans changed our way of thinking about ourselves,” one older villager recalls in “The Fantastic Invasion,” a 1991 BBC documentary about the John Frum movement, which is considered one of the few remaining “cargo cults” in the world, with a belief system that associates modern goods with prayer. “We’d been used to being treated as if we were rubbish people. The Americans gave us our dignity,” he said. They also gave them a blast of good-natured cheer, with plenty of singing and whistling day or night.

But it all ended all too quickly, and the men, music and magic machines were gone.

To this day, Chief Isaac and his fellow believers have celebrations for which they dress in their approximation of American military uniforms and march with bamboo poles that are supposed to be rifles. They fly our flag, they sing our songs.

And even though Chief Isaac found our pace, noise and pollution unsettling when he visited here in 1995, he still loves America.

“You saved us from the Japanese and have always been good to us,” he said.

These days, despite a school and health clinic to support and in the wake of a devastating cyclone last year, the gifts from America are modest and nothing like the heaps of goods that once arrived. World War II veterans come to visit, as do anthropologists, journalists, photographers, filmmakers and curiosity-seeking tourists like me out for a thrill and a Facebook posting.

I told Chief Isaac and his circle about our Memorial Day and July 4 weekends. I also promised to send them a flag, then shook all their hands.

“Before you go,” one man said, “will you play your song again?”

As I did, singing, “from the mountains, to the prairies, to the oceans, white with foam,” I started to feel a catch in my throat and I had to take a breath to keep from crying.