FILIPINO Catholics in Balangiga, Eastern Samar will have a big reason to celebrate their Christmas next month following the scheduled return of the controversial bells that were taken away by Americans 117 years ago.
“They are still being refurbished in the US. Then the two bells will be transported to Korea, where they will join the third bell. Then the three bells will be transported to the Philippines, and to Balangiga,” said known Leyte-based historian Rolando Borrinaga, one of its ardent campaigners.
“The timetable is still mid-December,” Borrinaga told Sunstar Philippines.
Borrinaga, who is also the secretary of the National Committee on Historical Research of the National Commission on Culture and the Arts, said the timing of the return of the bells to the country is “supposedly a Christmas present.”
In Balangiga, parish priest Serafin Tybaco Jr. said they have already prepared a new concrete platform where they can show the bells to the public.
The platform is located at the burial ground of the villagers who were killed by the American soldiers during the attack on September 28, 1901.
The attack paved the way for the seizure of the church bells as war booties by the 11th Infantry Regiment of the American forces.
Two bells were exhibited at Francis E. Warren Air Force Base in Cheyenne, Wyoming, while the third is displayed at the US military base in South Korea.
“Residents used the bells to signal the attack without the knowledge of priests,” Tybaco said following the handover ceremony in Wyoming led by US Defense Secretary James Mattis.
“These bells are meaningful for the residents because it symbolizes pride for the people of Balangiga. It signifies a lot, in the religious site it signifies the religiosity of the people of Balangiga and on the civil side, it signifies the bravery of the people here,” said Tybaco in a report.
During the attack, machete-wielding locals killed 54 Americans soldiers, turning the incident as the “single worst defeat” of the US forces during the Philippine-American war.
However, an estimated 2,500 Filipinos were also killed when the Americans retaliated, reducing the Samar Island into a “howling wilderness.”
For over two decades, the return of the Balangiga bells has been a subject of various campaigns.
“The latest successful campaign for the return of the Bells of Balangiga was largely a veterans-to-veterans effort. So many in the US veterans community have let their voices be known and lent their support -- including National Resolutions of support from both the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) and the American Legion,” wrote one campaigner of the bells’ return.
Meanwhile, Borrinaga said the return of the bells “is the last issue of contention pertaining to the Philippine-American War.”
He said “there could be closure over that aspect of Philippine history” if the bells will be returned.
"The original agreement during the campaign has always been to return the bells to the Church where they belonged. It's a private property," said Borrinaga, who is a member of Balangiga Research Group along with British journalist Bob Couttie, and E. Jean Wall, daughter of US soldier Adolph Gamlin who survived the Balangiga attack.
“One of the contributions made by the Balangiga Research Group [Rolando Borrinaga, Jean Wall-Fe and myself] was to demonstrate the provenance and authenticity of the bells in Wyoming and the one with the 9th Infantry. At the time, there was doubt about their identity. That effort used photogrammetry on the picture of the bell with Company C survivors which determined its size and the presence of a dent which match those on the bell with the 9th infantry. Inscriptions on the bells were matched with records from the Archdiocese of Manila which showed that they matched the priests of Balangiga in the years inscribed on the bells. Other documents gave us step-by-step how the bells got where they were. For the first time, they were positively identified,” Couttie wrote on Facebook.