HAGÅTÑA (The Guam Daily Post) — The story of Larry Raigetal is one that may sound a lot like a quest, but for the traditional canoe navigator, his story begins with his first memories of the Christmas Drop experience growing up on the tiny atoll of Lamotrek.
Every year, people here on Guam donate gifts as part of the annual Operation Christmas Drop, which brings tools, fishing supplies, food, clothing and Christmas gifts to residents in the outer islands of the Federated States of Micronesia, including Lamotrek, which is part of the FSM’s Yap state.
Raigetal was a recipient of those gifts in his childhood. He lived on Lamotrek until he was 16. At the time, there were 28 households on the atoll, no electricity and no running water. The atoll and its people were cut off from much of the world.
“Everybody knows everybody. That was my childhood and growing up life consisted as a child of learning and spending time in the canoe house and watching the adults carve canoes or make ropes or build something. We participated in community activities like group fishing or whatever it may be.”
While Lamotrek celebrates Christmas with a feast, the islanders didn’t know about Western traditions of gift-giving or much about the outside world.
The Christmas Drop provides an opportunity for the Air Force to conduct flight training while also conducting the annual humanitarian mission. Gifts are placed in big boxes that are then strapped to parachutes before they’re dropped on the remote islands using C-130 cargo aircraft.
“For me, growing up as a child, especially, I truly appreciated the Christmas Drop, in many ways. Not only did it bring the initial exposure for me and raise the curiosity, I think that was really the beginning of my long personal journey to set sail and sail off into the horizon in search of where these items were coming from. I was so determined that regardless of what happened, that I’m going to be able to find out where it was coming from and I am so grateful for that experience,” Raigetal said.
His earliest memories of the Christmas Drop are from when he was 4 or 5 years old.
“In the early to mid-’70s,” Raigetal said, “for us kids that was the event to look forward to besides the jolly holiday season for the community. I’d say for us more interesting was the Christmas Drop.”
All the children in the community looked forward to the Christmas Drop because they knew there could possibly be a toy in it for them. The noisier the toy the better.
“I was always hoping for some kind of toys, especially the toys that talked were always fascinating for me. When the box is dropped they are all going to the chief’s house and open up from there so everybody is sitting around, men, women and children and they open the box,” Raigetal said.
While everyone would wait patiently to be called for their share of the contents, retrieving the box was like a race to the prize.
Raigetal learned the importance of reaching the box first and began chasing after the box from a very young age.
“If you have a child that reaches that box first, even if they reach the box and can’t cut the parachute and some adult has to do it, but that child is the owner of that parachute. In many ways, we were always trying to kind of help your father, your uncles to get to that parachute first,” Raigetal said.
Unannounced
Raigetal said the parachute was the most important gift. One year, his family reached the box first.
“I remember my first time sleeping under a mosquito net — it was actually a parachute.”
The Christmas Drop was always unannounced and could occur at any time of the day.
“On the beach are all these children running around, they saw where the plane was because you hear the gradual sound as it increases and you’re (trying to listen to) where it might come from,” Raigetal said.
Everyone dropped what they were doing, he recalled. The men in the lagoon would head back to shore to grab their canoes and race to the box if it landed in the water. Likewise, the women in the taro patches would drop what they were doing and race to the beach, that is, if it didn’t land on the taro patches.
It was an exciting but frantic moment, Raigetal said. But the very first Christmas Drop after the war was actually quite scary, according to his recollection of the experience of his grandfather, who had survived World War II and the Japanese occupation.
“They ran for shelter…. Some of the adults it was all quite a familiar sound — warplanes. So hearing that they all ran and hid.”
But as the Christmas Drop continued, the community came to associate the planes with good times. It became an event that everyone looked forward to each year as it brought much-needed supplies for survival on the atoll.
Last year, the community was sad when the Covid-19 pandemic closed the FSM’s borders and the Christmas Drop couldn’t occur.
He said this year’s Christmas Drop brought back the holiday cheer. Raigetal has seven siblings who still live on the atoll.
During the recent Christmas Drop push ceremony at Andersen Air Force Base, he was able to send a postcard as part of the delivery.
The postcard was addressed to his siblings and community members.
“Basically, telling them that I am on the other end now. I’ve seen how those things are prepared and how they are being dropped,” Raigetal said. “I thank the community of Guam.”
Andersen Air Force Base 36t Wing Commander Brig. Gen. Jeremy Sloane, left, and University of Guam professor Larry Raigetal push a box into a C-130 cargo aircraft to kick off this year’s 70th Annual Christmas Drop on Dec. 6, 2021.
