US Secretary of Defense James Mattis on Wednesday formally returned church bells to the Philippines that were taken as war trophies more than a century ago following gruesome clashes, seeking to close a contentious chapter in the two allies’ history.
The decision to return the “Bells of Balangiga” to the Philippines ends a decades-long quest by Manila, including by Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, and is expected to bolster US-Philippine relations.
However, it has upset some US veterans and Wyoming’s delegation to the US Congress, which uniformly opposed returning bells that were a memorial to the 45 US soldiers who were killed during a surprise attack on Sept. 28, 1901, in the central town of Balangiga.
Photo: Reuters
Two of the three bells have been on display at F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming. The third bell is at a US Army museum in South Korea.
Mattis, speaking at a ceremony at the base attended by the Philippine ambassador to the US, said that the Philippines has proven itself as a great ally in conflicts during the century since that clash.
He added that the sacrifices of US forces would not be forgotten.
“To those who fear we lose something by returning these bells, please hear me when I say: Bells mark time, but courage is timeless,” Mattis said. “It does not fade in history’s dimly lit corridors.”
In Manila, the Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs cheered the move.
“Today is a time of solemn remembrance as we pay tribute to all those who gave up their lives during the Filipino-American War,” the department said.
Wyoming’s congressional delegation, which did not attend the ceremony, issued a terse statement.
“We continue to oppose any efforts by the administration to move the bells to the Philippines without the support of Wyoming’s veterans community,” US senators Mike Enzi and John Barrasso and Representative Liz Cheney said in a joint statement.
All three bells are to be restored and handed over to the Philippines as early as next month, US Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for South and Southeast Asia Joe Felter said.
The 1901 attack in Balangiga was seen as perhaps the worst routing of US soldiers since the Battle of Little Bighorn in 1876, also known as Custer’s Last Stand.
One or more of the church bells were rung to signal the attack in Balangiga, historians say.
US forces took the bells after a brutal counterattack that killed anywhere from hundreds to thousands of people in the Philippines, historians say.
One US general was said to have directed his troops to “make the interior of Samar a howling wilderness.”
Some Wyoming veterans, like Cheryl Shannon at Veterans of Foreign Wars, said they were fine with the decision to return the bells.
“We’re tired of it always being an issue,” said Shannon, an Iraq war veteran.
However, Hank Miller, a veteran who wanted to keep the bells in Wyoming, said that broader support for his position had faded as it became clear Washington would return the bells.
“I was advised to ‘stop fighting a losing battle’ and ‘stop beating a dead horse’ as the bells were going back,” Miller said.
An endangered baby pygmy hippopotamus that shot to social media stardom in Thailand has become a lucrative source of income for her home zoo, quadrupling its ticket sales, the institution said Thursday. Moo Deng, whose name in Thai means “bouncy pork,” has drawn tens of thousands of visitors to Khao Kheow Open Zoo this month. The two-month-old pygmy hippo went viral on TikTok and Instagram for her cheeky antics, inspiring merchandise, memes and even craft tutorials on how to make crocheted or cake-based Moo Dengs at home. A zoo spokesperson said that ticket sales from the start of September to Wednesday reached almost
‘BARBAROUS ACTS’: The captain of the fishing vessel said that people in checkered clothes beat them with iron bars and that he fell unconscious for about an hour Ten Vietnamese fishers were violently robbed in the South China Sea, state media reported yesterday, with an official saying the attackers came from Chinese-flagged vessels. The men were reportedly beaten with iron bars and robbed of thousands of dollars of fish and equipment on Sunday off the Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島), which Taiwan claims, as do Vietnam, China, Brunei, Malaysia and the Philippines. Vietnamese media did not identify the nationalities of the attackers, but Phung Ba Vuong, an official in central Quang Ngai province, told reporters: “They were Chinese, [the boats had] Chinese flags.” Four of the 10-man Vietnamese crew were rushed
Scientists yesterday announced a milestone in neurobiological research with the mapping of the entire brain of an adult fruit fly, a feat that might provide insight into the brains of other organisms and even people. The research detailed more than 50 million connections between more than 139,000 neurons — brain nerve cells — in the insect, a species whose scientific name is Drosophila melanogaster and is often used in neurobiological studies. The research sought to decipher how brains are wired and the signals underlying healthy brain functions. It could also pave the way for mapping the brains of other species. “You might
INSTABILITY: If Hezbollah do not respond to Israel’s killing of their leader then it must be assumed that they simply can not, an Middle Eastern analyst said Israel’s killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah leaves the group under huge pressure to deliver a resounding response to silence suspicions that the once seemingly invincible movement is a spent force, analysts said. Widely seen as the most powerful man in Lebanon before his death on Friday, Nasrallah was the face of Hezbollah and Israel’s arch-nemesis for more than 30 years. His group had gained an aura of invincibility for its part in forcing Israel to withdraw troops from southern Lebanon in 2000, waging a devastating 33-day-long war in 2006 against Israel and opening a “support front” in solidarity with Gaza since
RSS