Locals renew call for Balangiga bells return

BALANGIGA, Eastern Samar, Sept. 29 (PNA) – Residents in this town renewed their call for the return of the three church bells that American soldiers took from them as war booty 115 years ago.

Town Mayor Randy Graza and Eastern Samar Acting Governor Marcelo Picardal led the call during Wednesday’s Balangiga Encounter Day commemoration.

Graza recalled that in their previous attempt to recover the bells from the American government, there was a time that they almost succeeded when people in Wyoming agreed to it, but the governor refused.

 

The mayor is aware that there are also Americans lobbying for the return of Balangiga bells, but they all need help from other government agencies and individuals.

“I appreciate all their efforts. It is better if there are many who will join the plea,” Graza said.

In this renewed call for the bells’ return, the town and provincial government will come up again with a resolution for submission to Congress, according Picardal.

The governor is optimistic that members of House of Representatives in the region will join the call.

“We have to collaborate and unite for the United States government to listen to us,” Picardal said.

As historians said, at the break of dawn on Sept. 28, 1901, a group of men were parading at the town plaza going to the church. They were wearing women’s clothes so that the American soldiers would not detect there were no more real women in the town.

The “real” women together with the children, were already evacuated to the mountains.

The other men were carrying caskets and when asked they told the sentries “El Cholera”, as there was cholera epidemic and some children died of it.

Unknown to the soldiers, the other coffins contained sharp bolos and canes.

As the bells tolled, the Filipino revolutionaries attacked the American officers and soldiers at the convent and tents in the public plaza while they were eating their breakfast, leaving them helpless and unable to get their rifles.

They were overpowered by the feisty and aggrieved Filipinos using only native weapons the bolos, canes, bows and arrows.

The Filipinos that served the Americans made sure that they were given tuba (native wine extracted from coconut) and were drunk every night before the attack.

To think, these soldiers are well-trained and battle tested with three campaign medals earned in Cuba in 1898, in Luzon in 1900 and during the Boxer Rebellion in China in 1900, according to historians.

As a reprisal, Gen. Jacob Smith ordered to turn the town as a howling wilderness. Any Filipino male above 10 years of age capable of bearing arms be shot dead. They burned and annihilate the town.

As a war trophy, the American soldiers took with them the church bells.

There were three church bells taken from the burned church after the reprisal on September 29, 1901.

One church bell is in the position of the 9th Infantry Regiment at Camp Cloud, South Korea.

The two bronze bells are on a former base of the 11th Infrantry Regiment at F. E. Warren Air Force 

Base in Cheyenee, Wyoming. A 400-year old British Falcon cannon in the plaza was also taken by the soldiers.

Since 1990s, there are several attempts to return the bells to the country by both Filipino and US lawmakers, but until this year, the bells are still with the US government’s control.

Today, a monument in the town’s public plaza immortalizes the Balangiga Encounter Day by National Artist Napoleon Abueva. The monument depicts the surprise attack by Filipino revolutionaries on American colonial forces. (PNA)

FPV/SQM/ROEL T. AMAZONA/EGR