Balangiga bells
[9] The following inscription appears on this bell: "Se Refundió Siendo Cura Parroco El M.R.P.F[a] Agustín Delgado Año 1889".
[1] On September 28, 1901, Philippine Republican Army soldiers, and irregular military forces and/or the Pulahan[citation needed] from Balangiga and nearby towns ambushed Company C of the 9th U.S. Infantry Regiment while they were at breakfast, killing 48 and wounding 22 of the 78 men of the unit, with only four escaping unhurt and four missing in action.
[10] In reprisal, 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[10] who was capable of bearing arms.
[13] Smith and his primary subordinate, Major Littleton Waller of the United States Marine Corps, were both court-martialled for war crimes against the civilian population of Samar.
Waller was charged specifically of tying one of the natives to a tree and shooting bullets into their body for three straight days, before finally killing them on the fourth.
The bells were taken because one had been used by the Filipinos to signal the attack on Company C, 9th Infantry[15] and because the metal could have been turned into weapons such as cannons and bayonets.
The unit was returned to its old Madison Barracks in Sackets Harbor, New York where they built a brick pedestal to display it.
On May 16, 1905, the Cheyenne Daily Leader reported that the cannon had been mounted on the parade ground near the flagpole along with other relics from the Philippines "to include the famous bell which gave the signal for the massacre of a whole company.
Two large bells three feet tall and a seven-foot cannon were proudly displayed in front of the flagpole on the parade ground of the fort.
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.
Walter Kundis, a friend of Witeck's, had discovered the bells at the Francis E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming.
Witeck also wrote to Hawaii Senator Spark Matsunaga, seeking his assistance in having the bells returned to the Philippines.
However, Roy Daza, a representative of Ramos sent to the U.S. on the matter of the bells, was informed that Clinton's offer was considered "illegal" in some State Department circles.
Philippine Ambassador to the United States Raul Rabe visited Cheyenne, Wyoming twice, trying to win support for this proposal.
393, authored by Aquilino Pimentel Jr. and urging the Arroyo administration to undertake formal negotiations with the United States for the return of the bells.
[26] 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.
On September 26, 2006, Congressmen Bob Filner, Dana Rohrabacher, and Ed Case co-sponsored House Concurrent Resolution No.
The townspeople of Balangiga asked the United States to return the church bells when they received relief from the U.S. military after Typhoon Haiyan hit the town in 2013.
In August 2018, Secretary Mattis informed Congress that the Department of Defense intended to return the bells to the Philippines.
[42] The U.S. Department of Defense subsequently announced that the two bells at the Francis E. Warren Air Force Base would be turned over by Secretary Mattis to Ambassador Romualdez on November 15, 2018, in Cheyenne, Wyoming.
[45] The next morning, the US Embassy in the Philippines stated that the bells were on board a US Air Force Lockheed C-130 Hercules on the way to Manila.
[48] On December 13, 2018, Borongan Bishop Crispin Varquez released a statement objecting to the proposal embodied in Philippine Senate Resolution No.
[50] The bells were airlifted by a Philippine Air Force C-130 plane to the nearby town of Guiuan, arriving on December 14.
[58][59] Subsequent to these efforts, support of veterans organizations, including the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the American Legion, although not a legal requirement of the 2018 National Defense Appropriations Act, emerged with both organizations passing resolutions supporting the return of the Balangiga bells after the changes to the 2018 National Defense Appropriations Act and the announcement by Secretary Mattis that the bells would be returned.
Rolando Borrinaga and former United States Navy officers Brian Buzzell,[60] Dennis Wright, and Dan McKinnon are described as those who "campaigned to have the bells repatriated" via lobbying of the veterans organizations;[61] these same American ex-servicemen had spearheaded the recovery from West Point in 2016 of another church bell taken in 1901 from the Saints Peter and Paul Church in Bauang, La Union.
[62] The Balangiga Research Group's work was important in convincing US veterans to support the effort to return the bells.
[63] The group includes Borrinaga, British journalist Bob Couttie, and E. Jean Wall, the daughter of Adolph Gamlin, an American soldier of the 9th Infantry who survived the Filipino attack in 1901.
The resolution specifically acknowledged the efforts of Manila Archbishop Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, Rear Admiral Daniel W. McKinnon Jr., Captain Dennis L. Wright, and Captain Brian V. Buzzell, who led the initiative and provided information on the law and history related to the bells' presence in Wyoming and South Korea.
The resolution also acknowledged that “the US-Philippine Society through Mr. Edwin Mason (Hank) Henderson, Dr. Henry B. Howard, and Ms. Ludmilla L. Kasulke, Esq.
[65] Eugenio Roy Daza, the grandson of Captain Eugenio Daza, a member of Vicente Lukbán's staff who helped organize the surprise attack on the 9th Infantry garrison in 1901, claims that based on the memoirs of his grandfather and on documents he found in US archives, the American soldiers took but a single bell; the bells that had been displayed in Wyoming came not from the Balangiga Church, but from other churches in the Philippines.
