REYES, JASPER D.

DATE
COE 1102
BELLS OF BALANGIGA
BY J.P. LAWRENCE
Balangiga Bells are three church bells which were located at Balangiga,
Eastern Samar. The bells were taken by US Army from San Lorenzo de Martir
Church as war trophies after reprisals following the Balangiga Massacre in
1901 during the Philippine-American War. One church bell is on the possession
of 9th Infantry Regiment at Camp Red Cloud, base in South Korea while the
two other bells were at the former base of the 11 th Infantry Regiment at
Francis E. Warren Air Force Base in Cheyenne, Wyoming. In late 1950s,
Philippine Government and Balangiga residents sought to recover the bells but
they failed and leads them to frustration. Luckily, in December 11, 2018, the
bells were finally returned to the Philippines after 117 years.
Balangiga Church was dedicated in 1854 to Roman martyr San Lorenzo.
It took the town 4 years to raise funds to acquire its first church bell and
around 1953, the first bell was casted and it bears the Franciscan coat of arms.
The said bell has a mouth diameter of 31.25 inches and has a height of 30
inches. It has also inscription which appears as follows: “R. San Francisco Año
El 1853” meaning “R. San Francisco The Year 1853”. R. San Francisco is said
to be the parish priest of Balangiga church that time. The second bell was
casted around 1889 and has a mouth diameter of 27.75 inches as well as a
height of 27.5 inches. The town acquired the second bell through the initiative
of Fr. Agustin Delgado, whose name is inscribed on it. The following
inscriptions appears on the bell: “Se Refundio Siendo Cura Parroco El M.R.P.F.
Agustin Delgado Año 1889”. The first two bells were referred to as campanas
colgantes in Spanish, meaning “hanging bells” which were usually hung from
a beam and are rung using a rope attached to the clapper. The third bell is
the smallest bell among the three and it is acquired through the initiative of
Fr. Bernardo Aparicio. The estimated height of the bell is 23-24 inch and has
a mouth diameter of 20 inches. It also bears the Franciscan Emblem and also
has an inscription which appears as: “Se Refundio Siendo Parroco P. Bernardo
Aparicio Año 1895. The third bell is the type of bell which is known as esquila
(small bell) or campana de vuelo, literally a “flight bell” used to sound warning
in times of peril. The Spanish word refundio means that the bell had been
recast from scap bronze.
Balangiga Massacre
Group of Filipino villagers from Balangiga ambushed Company C of the
9th US Infantry Regiment while they were at breakfast on September 28, 1901.
The said massacre killed 48, wounded 22 of the 78 men of the unit, with only
four escapuing unhurt and four missing in action. The villagers captured about
100 rifles and 25,000 rounds of ammunition. An estimated 20 to 25 of them
died in the fighting, with a similar number of wounded. General Jacob H. Smith
ordered that Samar be turned into a “howling wilderness” and that they shoot
any Filipino male above ten years of age who was capable of bearing arms
which was recognized as most widespread killing of Filipino civilians in the
entire duration of the war. Aftermath of the massacre also lead to the
increased use of water cure in Samar. American soldiers seized three church
bells from the town church and moved them back to United States as war
trophies. The 11th Infantry Regiment took all three bells when they left
Balangiga for Tacloban on October 18, 1901. The 9th Infantry Regiment
maintained that the single bell in their possession was presented to the
regiment by villagers when the unit left Balangiga on April 9, 1902 but the bell
had been actually given to them by the 11th Infantry Regiment.
Removal to the United States
The town was recaptured on September 29, 1901 by 55 men of
Company G, 9th Infantry. The unit departed the town the same day and was
replaced by 132 men from companies K and L of the 11th Infantry Regiment
which garrisoned the town until relieved on October 18, 1901. When the 11 th
Infantry departed, they took the bells removed from the burned down
Balangiga church and a cannon from the plaza in front of the church. The bells
were taken because one had been used by the Filipinos to signal the attack
on Company C, 9th Infantry and because the metal could have been turned
into weapons such as cannons and bayonets. All three bells remained under
the charge of quartermaster Captain Robert Alexander at their Tacloban
headquarters. The 11th Infantry gave it (the small signal bell that signaled the
attack against American troops by the Filipinos in the Balangiga Massacre) to
the 9th Infantry Regiment at their headquarters in Calbayog a few months
before the 9th Infantry’s departure for home. They arrived in San Francisco on
July 27, 1902. The unit (9th Infantry Regiment) was returned to its old Madison
Barracks in Sackets Harbor, New York where they built a brick pedestal to
display it. In 1928, it was moved to Fort Lewis in Tacoma, Washington. The
bell was later kept at the 2nd Infantry Division Museum in Camp Red Cloud,
Uijeongbu, South Korea. It had been displayed at the unit’s Camp Hovey
headquarters. The 11th Infantry left the Philippines in February 1904 taking
the two larger bells with them and redeployed to Fort D.A. Russell in Wyoming
on March 23, 1904. On May 16, 1905, the Cheyenne Daily Leader reported
that the cannon had been mounted on the parade ground near the flagpole
along the other relics from the Philippines “to include the famous bell which
gave the signal for the massacre of a whole company. Two larger bells three
feet tall and a seven-foot cannon were profoundly displayed in front of the
flagpole on the parade ground of the fort.” A sign was installed over one of
the bells:
This bell hung in the church at Balangiga, Samar, PI, and rung the signal
for the attack on Company C, 9th U.S. Infantry, Sept. 29, 1901. Taken by
Company L, 11th Infantry and detachment of Company K, 11th Infantry, the
first units to reach the scene after the massacre.
 The 11th Infantry reposted to Texas in 1913, leaving the two large bells
behind. In 1927, Fort D.A. Russell was renamed Fort Francis E. Warren. The
army left Fort Francis E. Warren in 1941, again leaving the bells where they
were. On October 7, 1949, the former army base became Francis E. Warren
Air Force Base, and the bells became artifacts in the collection of the National
Museum of the United States Air Force. In 1967, Colonel Robert J. Hill,
commander of the 90th Missile Wing, had a curve red brick wall constructed in
the F.E. Warren AFB trophy park for the bells, with a bronze plaque on the
wall between them telling the story of the massacre at Balangiga. As of 1987,
a faith inscription was visible on the back of both bells, reading:
USED BY PHILIPPINOS
TO SOUND SIGNAL FOR MASSACRE
OF COMPANY “C” NINTH INFANTRY
AT BALANGIGA P.I.
28TH SEPTEMBER 1901
In 1979, it was discovered that a bronze cannon that was also taken
from Balangiga had been casted in London in 1557 and bore the monogram
of Mary I of England. As of 2001, a glass case housed the bells along with the
400 year-old Falcon cannon.
Recovery Attempts
In November 1957, Fr. Horacio de la Costa of the Department of History
at the Ateneo de Manila University wrote a letter to the Thirteenth Air Force’s
command historian Chip Wards at Clark Air Force Base stating that the bells
belonged to the Franciscans and that they should be returned to the
Philippines. This is the earliest record of Filipino interest in the Balangiga Bells.
The following year, a group of American Franciscans based in Guihulngan,
Negros Oriental again wrote to Wards stating that the two large bells were
Franciscan. In 1987, Tomas Gomez III, then serving as Consul General in
Honolulu, Hawaii received correspondence from John Witeck concerning the
bells. Walter Kundis, a friend of Witeck’s, had discovered the bells at Francis
E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming. Witeck also wrote Hawaii Senator Spark
Matsunaga, seeking his assistance in having the bells returned to the
Philippines. Senator Matsunaga in turn wrote the Department of Air Force, but
received a negative reply.
The administration of President Fidel Ramos initiated attempts to
recover one or more of the bells from Bill Clinton’s administration in the mid-
1990s. The United States government has been adamant that the bells are US
government property, that it would take an act of Congress to return them,
and that the Catholic Church has no say in the matter. The Catholic Bishops’
Conference of the Philippines hold the position that the bells are inappropriate
as trophies of war. In 1998, Ramos proposed casting two new bells, then
having each country keep an original and a duplicate. Philippine Ambassador
to the United States Raul Rabe visited Cheyenne, Wyoming twice, trying to
win support for this proposal. He was not successful.
 In 2002, the Philippine Senate approved Senate Resolution No. 393,
authored by Aquilino Pimentel Jr. and urging the Arroyo administration to
undertake formal negotiations with the United Stated for the return of the
Bells. In 2005, Bishop of Borongan, Samar, Leonardo Medroso, and Balangiga
Parish Priest Saturnino Obzunar wrote an open letter addressed to President
George W. Bush, the United States Congress, and the Helsinki Commission
requesting them to facilitate the return of the bells. That same year, the
Wyoming Veterans’ Commission favored the return of the Filipino-American
War relics, but Wyoming Governor Dave Freudenthal stated that he disagreed
with the Commission and opposed returning the bells. On January 13, 2005,
Congressman Bob Filner introduced H.Res.313 urging the President to
authorize the transfer of ownership of one of the bells to the people of the
Philippines. The resolution died on January 3, 2007 with the adjournment of
Congress.
On September 26, 2006, Congressmen Bob Filner, Dana Rohrabacher,
and Ed Case co-sponsored House Concurrent Resolution No. 481 urging the
President to authorize the return of the church bells, but it died on January 3,
2009 with the adjournment of Congress. In 2007, Napoleon Abueva, the
Philippines’ National Artist for sculpture, wrote American Ambassador to the
Philippines Kristie Kenney asking for help in the bells’ recovery. Senator Manny
Villar filed Senate Resolution No. 177 on October 25, a resolution “expressing
the sense of the Senate for the return to the Philippines of the Balangiga Bells
which were taken by the US troops from the town of Balangiga, Province of
Samar in 1901”. The townspeople of Balangiga asked the United States to
return rhe church bells when they received relief from the US military after
Typhoon Haiyan hit the town in 2013. President Duterte demanded the bells’
return in his State of the Nation Address on July 24, 2017, but he did not raise
the issue in a bilateral meeting with President Donald Trump in November
2017 during the 31st ASEAN Summit. In February 2018, politicians Randy
Hultgren objected to the bells being returned to the Philippines due to the
current human rights record established by Duterte’s Drug War. The bells were
restored and returned by December 2018.
Repatriation