Bells of Balangiga go home after 117 years
Relics, representing dark US-Philippine history, to be placed at their original spot
When the church bells of Balangiga pealed on the morning of September 28, 1901, it was a signal for the natives of the town in Eastern Samar to attack a garrison of American soldiers.
Forty-eight members of US 9th Infantry Regiment detachment died in the onslaught, but the uprising drew immediate and commensurate violence from the Americans that left hundreds of natives killed as the US started its colonial subjugation of the Philippines.
The US forces took three bells at the belfry of the Church of Saint Lawrence the Martir as a war booty. ■
One hundred seventeen years after that tragic incident, Filipinos and representatives from the US government gathered at the Villamor Airbase in Pasay to put a closure in a dark chapter of the two countries’ shared history. “It has been a very long road home [for the bells]. Many Filipinos and Americans worked tirelessly for decades to make today possible,” US Ambassador to the Philippines Sung Kim said during the arrival ceremony of the bells.
The bells arrived in the Philippines yesterday following a long flight from the United States and then to the Kadena Air Base in Okinawa, Japan.
More than an antique Church relic that was made during an era when the Philippines was still a colony of Spain, the bells had come to symbolise the Philippines’ image as a vassal state. Now, the Philippines and the US hope to change that impression.