Listening to the bells of Balangiga

I HAD waited two years for the opportunity -- to see a pair of church bells at a military base in Wyoming. And then finally, there I was at the gate of Warren Air Force Base in Cheyenne at 1:30 p.m. on Friday, September 19. I had traveled 99 miles from Denver after a two-and-a-half hour flight from San Francisco to get to the base to see the bells that were taken 102 years ago this month from the belfry of a Catholic church in Balangiga, Samar.

The poet Deanie Bocobo asks us to listen to these Bells of Balangiga and to

"hear them now these many years after, still tolling grim emotion,
echoing into the unpacific twilight of that star spangled Ocean,
mournful sounds of the blood stained Philippine Sea,
as it surges ever into the far horizons with the tides of irredeemable history."

The highly charged question of who rightfully owns these bells has raged for more than a century and will once again occupy center stage when President George W. Bush visits the Philippines on October 18.

During his scheduled visit in Manila, President Bush may be confronted with this issue by the Bishop of Borongan, Samar who is seeking an audience with him to beseech him to please help the people of his hometown recover the two bells stolen from his church in Balangiga in 1901.

The bells were taken as "booty of war" when the US 11th Infantry Regiment, known as the "Wyoming Volunteers," swooped down on a coastal village in the island of Samar to exact vengeance on the townspeople for their attack on an American outpost the month before. After razing the town and the local Catholic church, the soldiers carted off two 500-pound bronze church bells and a valuable 1557 Queen Mary Tudor canon back to their home base of Fort Russell in Cheyenne, Wyoming.

Inside what is now known as Warren Air Base, in a site called Trophy Park, the regiment's command set up the bells in a brick monument in honor of their fallen dead. The inscription sandblasted to the side of the bells proclaimed: "These bells signalled the attack by bolo tribesmen on Sunday morning, the 28th of September 1901, in which Company 'C' of the Ninth U.S. Infantry was massacred."

In August of 1901, 74 American officers and men from the 9th Infantry Regiment Company C occupied the town of Balangiga in the island of Samar. They were there in response to reports of the destabilizing presence of "insurrectionists" opposed to the American colonization of the Philippines. Fresh from quelling the Boxer Rebellion in China, these soldiers garrisoned the town hall and the local convent.

On the early Sunday morning of September 28, 1901, while the soldiers were eating their breakfast, the church bells pealed, the signal for the townspeople, led by Katipunan General Vicente Lukban, to attack the foreigners. Despite the element of surprise, the American soldiers were still able to kill about 250 Filipinos with their Krag rifles. But 48 American soldiers were slain that day, the largest loss of American lives in a single military encounter since the Civil War.

The survivors escaped to Leyte where nightmarish accounts of the "Balangiga Massacre" seeped their way into the front pages of US. newspapers. The 11th Infantry Regiment and the US Marines led by Major Littleton Waller were quickly dispatched to Balangiga with orders from Brigadier General Jacob Smith to burn every village in Samar and to take no prisoners. "I want you to kill and burn, the more you kill and burn, the better it will please me," were the specific orders of General Smith. With those orders, Samar became a "howling wilderness."

What is the "Balangiga Massacre"?

In US history books, this refers to the slaughter of the 48 American soldiers on September 28, 1901. In Philippine history books, however, this refers to the killing fields that followed, with Samareno casualties estimated at 25,000.

To commemorate the "Balangiga Massacre," the local Cheyenne chapter of the American Legion has held memorial ceremonies in Trophy Park in honor of the 48 American soldiers who perished in Balangiga.

In 1990 when then Philippine Secretary of National Defense Fidel V. Ramos met in Manila with US Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney, he raised the issue of the bells because Cheney had served as a former congressman of Wyoming. He asked Cheney if the US could return the bells back to the people of Balangiga.

We do not know what Cheney told Ramos but nothing came of it.

Ramos desperately wanted the bells of Balangiga returned to the Philippines in time for the centennial of Philippine Independence to be held on June 12, 1998. Because of their symbolic value, the bells would be the proud centerpiece of the celebration.

The Stars and Stripes newspaper reported the Philippine request in an article which appeared on September 16, 1996 ("Bloody Bells of Balangiga: Philippines Wants Booty back from Wyoming" by Mark Allen Peterson). The paper reported that the US would be open to a solution that "takes into account the feelings of both the Filipinos and the people of Wyoming."

In August of 1997, Philippine Ambassador to the United States Raul Rabe made the first of three trips to Cheyenne, Wyoming to talk to the local American veterans and the Wyoming Chamber of Commerce about the request of the Philippine president. Rabe presented the locals with a proposal: the Philippine government would pay the costs of replicating both bells (estimated at 40,000 dollars according to John Swallow) and each side would have one original bell and one duplicate bell.

The Gillette News Record voiced its support for the compromise proposal: "Because there are two bells, we can send one back to Balangiga and keep the other. In that spirit of sharing, they can symbolize not only a tragic past but a hopeful future."

The Casper Tribune on October 12, 1997 agreed: "Wyoming and our nation would reap the benefits of goodwill and Christian friendship from the people of the Philippine Islands for such a kind gesture."

Wyoming State Representative Jeff Wasserburger (R-Gillette) and Representative Jayne Mockler (D-Cheyenne) jointly sponsored a bipartisan resolution of support for the compromise proposal and it passed the state assembly. But the bells were federal property and it would take a federal act to remove the bells.

In the US Congress, five members of the House led by Representative Robert Underwood
(D-Guam) introduced a resolution (House Resolution 312) on November 7, 1997 urging President
Bill Clinton to "authorize the transfer of ownership of one of the bells taken from the town of Balangiga."

But the Cheyenne vets remained obstinate and opposed to any compromise. "We just don't believe in dismantling war memorials," fumed Robert Nab, an adjutant of the American Legion in Wyoming. They were unfazed even by the fact that at the American Legion national convention on October 15, 1997, their resolution opposing the compromise proposal was voted down by the delegates, chiefly because of the strong opposition of the Philippine chapter of the American Legion. But these Wyoming veterans have powerful friends in Washington, D.C.

US Senator Craig Thomas (R-Wyoming) announced at a public meeting in Sheridan, Wyoming on December 8, 1997 that he would oppose any move to return the bells back to the Philippines. "I will make sure the bill doesn't go past my desk," vowed Thomas.

The Sheridan Press reported that at that public meeting, a Filipina resident of Sheridan named Nelinda Evaristo-Dahmke criticized Thomas for his stand pointing out that the Philippines has been a valuable ally of the US in World War II, Korea and Vietnam.

At the invitation of Cheyenne Catholic Bishop Joseph Hart, Balangiga's Bishop Leonardo Medroso visited Cheyenne to "appeal to the concerned to plead for the return of the bells to the rightful owner."

"I am aware that there are some individuals or group of individuals who would insist on keeping the bells in Cheyenne [arguing] that it is a war trophy, a booty," Bishop Medroso said. "However, it is my belief that a religious article should never be made as an instrument of war nor does it become a trophy of the victors. Religion transcends war; in fact, it always pleads for peace and
reconciliation."

Though Bishop Medroso's plea was rejected by the veterans, he did not leave empty-handed. Bishop Hart gave him an 18-inch Madonna and Child statue taken from the same Balangiga church as the bells. The statue was given to Bishop Hart in 1984 by the widow of a soldier who participated in the razing of the church.

A Balangiga parish priest (Father Jose Manuel Lugay) and a Samar congressman (Representative Marcelino Libayan) also visited Cheyenne in private lobbying efforts, yielding similar negative results.

Even non-Filipinos joined in private lobbying efforts. Retired US Army Colonel Walter Teague led two delegations of WW II vets to Cheyenne to talk to their fellow vets, believing that a plea from fellow veterans might succeed where others had failed. Teague told the Wyoming vets that America should be grateful to the Filipino people for helping the Americans during WW II.

"They fed our POWs at great risk to themselves. They shielded and protected our soldiers in
the mountains," he said. But Colonel Teague's plea fell on deaf ears.

In the fall of 1999, with little notice and fanfare, Senator Thomas successfully inserted a rider into a government appropriations measure declaring a two-year moratorium on the return any US war booty. It was specifically directed at the bells of Balangiga.

On October 1, 2000, at the plenary session of the national empowerment conference of the National Federation of Filipino American Associations (NaFFAA), a resolution supporting the return of the two bells of Balangiga was presented.

After heated passionate arguments were made by delegates from various parts of the US, the resolution passed unanimously. A NaFFAA Bells of Balangiga (BoB) Task Force was created, charged with working for the return of the bells.

Members of the BoB Task Force met in Washington, D.C. on February 3, 2001 and made plans to hold a mass of healing and reconciliation on September 28, 2001, on the centennial of the "Balangiga Massacre" to be officiated by Bishop Hart.

It would be followed by a forum discussion with the American Legion veterans and a joint memorial service at Trophy Park.

To prepare for the centennial mass and the joint forum with the veterans, the BoB Task Force dispatched Sylvester and Sonia Salcedo to Cheyenne on July 3, 2001. Salcedo, a retired US Navy officer, contacted Representative Wasserburger who made arrangements for dinner with Colonel Joseph Sestak, the head of the American Legion chapter.

Salcedo was able to hammer out an agreement with the veterans for a joint ceremony at Trophy Park to honor all those who died at Balangiga, Americans and Filipinos alike.

Buoyed by the success of Salcedo's mission, members of the BoB Task Force then began to mobilize members from throughout the US to come to Cheyenne on September 28 for the centennial celebration. There would be a joint ceremony at the bells site followed by a mass at the local Catholic church officiated by Bishop Hart. It was all systems go.

And then 9/11 happened.

Because Warren Air Force Base is a "maximum security" military base, all passes were revoked and the centennial event canceled. At least to those who were not active or retired members of the US military. A small group of Filipinos led by retired Navy Commander Salcedo still trekked to Trophy Park for a small ceremony.

So now here I am at the gate of the base, two years later, eager to pay my respects to the captive bells. On the way to the base, I had called the Public Information Officer of the base to inquire about visiting Trophy Park. I was told that I would not be able to do so because the person in charge of tours to the Park was hospitalized that day. But I went to the base anyway because the man who was driving me to the base, Cesar Viray, had been to the park three years before and could take me there.

But when we reached the gate, we were told quite firmly that only military personnel could enter the base. Not even a call from Philippine Ambassador Albert del Rosario would change their minds. The bells would have no Filipino visitors that day.

When I returned to San Francisco on September 21, I attended a community merienda salo-salo at the Embarcadero. I recounted my experience in Cheyenne and a lively discussion of the bells issue ensued.

By pure serendipity, as Jay Caedo observed, a past Philippine senator who had introduced a bill in the Philippine Senate 1990 calling for the return of the bells was there to provide additional insight on the issue. Heherson "Sonny" Alvarez, a two-term Philippine senator who is now the presidential adviser on overseas Filipino communities, related his own trip to Cheyenne in 1991 to seek the return if the bells.

"I couldn't understand why the US would agree to return the bells of Nagasaki which were taken from Japan after the atomic bombing of that city but not return the bells of Balangiga." he said.

Also present at the salo-salo was current Philippine Senator Aquilino "Nene" Pimentel Jr. who spoke about his own call in the Philippine Senate for a resolution seeking the return of the bells. A joint resolution of the Philippine Congress could be presented to President Bush on October 18 after he delivers his speech to the joint session of Congress.

The discussion resulted in the formation of a Movement for the Return of the Bells. Its most enthusiastic supporter at the meeting was San Francisco Consul General Delia Rosal. Plans for lobbying Congress and waging a nationwide petition drive were mapped out.

The people are listening to the deafening muted sound of the bells of Balangiga.

Rodel E. Rodis, a San Francisco attorney, is an elected member of the San Francisco Community College Board and chair of the Northern California chapter of the National Federation of Filipino American Associations. Send comments to rodislaw@yahoo.com or to 2429 Ocean Avenue, San Francisco, California 94127.