YOU BETTER NOT SHOUT, I’M TELLING YOU WHY
How the US Military Brings Santa Claus to Faraway Towns
Micronesia is a collection of thousands of islands and atolls in the Pacific. Many of the islands are inhabited, although few have sizable populations; Guam, a US territory since the close of the Spanish-American War, is the most populous, with roughly 160,000 citizens. Some of the islands have formed a nation called the Federated States of Micronesia, which has just over 100,000 citizens spread across it. Of these citizens, about 500 live on an atoll known as Kapingamarangi, which is a roughly one square kilometer ring of land encapsulating seventy-five square kilometers of what would otherwise be ocean.
Kapingamarangi is not the type of place the US military would typically bother with, especially not during the relatively peaceful year of 1952. However, late that winter, a Boeing B-29 Superfortress—a strategic bomber used against Japan during World War II—was flying above the area. The locals gathered on the atoll’s beaches and started making hand gestures at the plane, which was flying low enough to notice what the people were doing. In response, the bomber’s crewmen dropped their payload onto the beaches below. No, they didn’t drop bombs, nor were the hand gestures from the Kapingamarangi locals lewd or otherwise unwelcoming (they were actually waving hello to the plane). As Senior Chairman Carlin Leslie described in an article on the Pacific Air Forces website, when the crew saw the “islanders waving to them, [they] quickly gathered some items they had on the plane, placed them in a container with a parachute attached, and dropped the cargo as they circled back.” The crew scattered what else they could find onboard across a handful of other inhabited islands in the region as well, and because of the time of year, this impromptu humanitarian mission became known as Operation Christmas Drop.
Each year since, the US Air Force has repeated the operation, making it the longest ongoing defense mission. In recent years, residents of Guam have also joined the efforts, donating food, clothing, household goods, toys, school supplies, and fishing nets. These items are gathered into boxes weighing roughly 400 pounds each. The Air Force then outfits the hefty “care packages” and drops them just offshore throughout Micronesian islands (ensuring that no one gets hit by a nearly quarter-ton crate from the sky).
For many recipients, this influx of goods is critical. Few of the islands in the area have an airstrip, and it’s hard to dock a cargo ship on a ring of sand. As a result, these islands are isolated from the rest of the world, with no effective means of importing stuff. The Operation Christmas Drop gifts are one of the few ways that new wares enter their local economies. As one Air Force member told the military press, Operation Christmas Drop “is a yearlong wait for these items, and for most of us it’s the only way to obtain new clothes and Christmas gifts.” As a bonus, the operation also “serves as a training mission” for the flight crew. And besides, it’s fun to be Santa.