page_title: Balangiga bells
section_title: Battle of Balangiga
hierarchical_section_title: Balangiga bells / Battle of Balangiga
caption_attribution_description: The third Balangiga bell in the Madison Barracks at Sackets Harbor, New York, station of the 9th US Infantry Regiment at the turn of the 20th century. This bell is now at Camp Red Cloud, their present station in Korea.
context_page_description: The Balangiga bells are three church bells that were taken by the United States Army from the Church of San Lorenzo de Martir in Balangiga, Eastern Samar, Philippines, as war trophies after reprisals following the Balangiga massacre in 1901 during the Philippine–American War. One church bell was in the possession of the 9th Infantry Regiment at Camp Red Cloud, their base in South Korea, while two others were on a former base of the 11th Infantry Regiment at Francis E. Warren Air Force Base in Cheyenne, Wyoming.
  People representing the Catholic Church in the Philippines, the Philippine government, and the residents of Balangiga had sought to recover the bells since the late 1950s, but their efforts were met with frustration for decades. Progress in negotiations was made in 2018, and the bells finally returned to the Philippines on 11 December 2018, after 117 years.
context_section_description: On 28 September 1901, Philippine Republican Army soldiers, and irregular military forces from Balangiga 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. 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.
  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 who was capable of bearing arms. This was the most widespread killing of Filipino civilians in the entire duration of the war. The aftermath of the massacre also led to the increased use of the water cure in Samar. The American soldiers seized three church bells from the town church and moved them back to the United States as war trophies. 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 9 April 1902. The bell had been actually given to them by the 11th Infantry Regiment, which had taken all three bells when they left Balangiga for Tacloban on 18 October 1901.
  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. Waller was acquitted of the charges. Smith was found guilty, admonished and retired from service, but charges were dropped shortly after. He was later hailed as a war hero.
caption: The signal bell displayed in the Madison Barracks at Sackets Harbor, New York station of the 9th US Infantry Regiment at the turn of the 20th century. This bell was later moved to Camp Red Cloud in Korea.
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