Finally, Balangiga Bells are returning to Samar

AT long last, after 117 years, the Balangiga Bells, symbol of the bitter conflict between Filipinos and Americans in the Filipino-American War that followed Spanish colonial rule and began the American colonial era, are returning to the church in Samar where they were seized as “war booty” in 1901.

That war between the Philippine revolutionaries who had succeeded in defeating Spanish troops on many fronts, only to face a new colonial power, the United States (US), officially ended with the capture of Gen. Emilio Aguinaldo by the Americans in Palanan, Isabela, on March 2, 1901.

But Filipino guerrillas carried on the fight. On September 29, 1901, guerrillas led by Gen. Vicente Lukban attacked the US garrison in Balangiga, Samar, killing 48 and wounding 22 men of the US 9th Infantry – the worst defeat suffered by the US Army since its war against American Indians in 1876. In retaliation, Gen. Jacob Smith ordered his troops to make Samar a “howling wilderness.” They killed some 2,500 Filipinos and took as war booty the three bells of the Balangiga town church.

General Smith was later court-martialed on orders of President Theodore Roosevelt and forced to retire because of the atrocity. But the Balangiga bells were never returned, two of them going to the Air Force base in Wyoming and one now at a US camp in South Korea.

Many Philippine officials, among them former President Fidel V. Ramos asked the US for the bells’ return, but were fiercely opposed by officials and families of the American troops who died in Balangiga. President Duterte renewed the appeal, to no avail. Then, invited by President Trump to visit the US, he refused, saying he would never go there as long as the bells are not returned.

Newly appointed Secretary of Foreign Affairs Teodoro Locsin picked up the story last week in a press conference in Singapore where President Duterte was attending the ASEAN summit. Locsin said he was once asked by US representative to the United Nations Nikki Haley about President Duterte’s refusal to visit the US and he told her about the Balangiga bells. It appears she relayed this to Defense Secretary John Mattis.

Last Wednesday, Secretary Mattis officially announced the bells will soon be returning to the Philippines. He shook hands with Philippine Ambassador to the US Jose Manuel Romualdez at Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming where they attended a Veterans Remembrance Ceremony.

It has indeed been a long story that began with war and death and bitter recrimination, but it will soon end with the return of the bells, this last reminder of the bitter Filipino-American War. Americans today are among our closest friends and allies; they need no booty to remind them we were once enemies.

As for Filipinos, they have long forgotten the bitterness of that war, for it was overtaken by the events of World War II when Filipino and American soldiers fought side by side against Japanese invasion and later in the Korean War and in the Vietnam War. Very soon, possibly before Christmas but surely by January next year, the bells will be back ringing for the people of Balangiga, Samar, no longer war booty, no longer symbols of conflict but of peace and friendship.