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We cannot free ourselves unless we move forward united in a single desire. – Emilio Aguinaldo

THIS June we celebrate our Independence Day and it dawned on me that I must write about the fight for independence of our country. We were ruled by turns by the Spaniards, the Americans and for a few years by the Japanese until finally we won the right to be on our own. It was a long and costly process and we owe it to our forefathers who fought many wars for our independence.

From my childhood I remember listening to the stories of my schoolteacher mother about the fight for independence in the shores of Samar and Leyte. I especially remember the story of the town of Balangiga in Eastern Samar which delivered a most telling blow to the conquering US Army during the Philippine-American War. As a result, the Balangiga church bells were taken as war booty by the American soldiers. The bells originally belonged to the Church of San Lorenzo de Martir in Balangiga. After the brutal reprisal that the US Army carried out against the townspeople of Balangiga for the massacre of American soldiers, the Americans seized the church’s three bells and took them out of the country. Efforts to reclaim them proved futile until 2018, 117 years later.

Oscar Peñaranda, a noted San Francisco-based Filipino-American writer, has written that one of the bells went to the 9th Infantry Regiment at Camp Red Cloud in South Korea while the two others were in the former base of the 11th Infantry Regiment at Francis E. Warren Air Force Base in Cheyenne, Wyoming.

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The smallest of the three bells was taken as it was used to signal the attack on the 9th US Infantry in September 1901. The bell, literally named a “flight bell” as it was used to sound the warning in times of peril, was the one that signaled the 6 a.m. attack by the Filipinos.

The American soldiers were caught unawares because the Filipino fighters were dressed as women. When they neared the US Army fort, the Filipinos shed their female clothing, killed the US soldiers and set fire to the fort. It was the encounter of the war in which the Americans suffered the most fatalities: 37 killed, including all three officers, and eight missing. Twenty-six survived and escaped to Basey. About 16 to 25 of the Filipino attackers died.

The US Army was so enraged that 10 days later they returned to Balangiga and razed the town to the ground. They killed many people and burned other towns and villages. Gen. Jacob “Mad Dog” Smith instructed his soldiers to kill every male over 10 years old and turn Samar into a “howling wilderness.” They got really pikon and targeted the bells. 

Nothing and no one was left in Balangiga. The townspeople took to the hills and returned only after Col. Florentino Peñaranda surrendered to the Americans in Baybay, Leyte (June 18, 1902), arguably the last officer of Aguinaldo’s regular army to do so.

Ma. Dolores Matias, a student at the Sunshine Place memoir-writing class, who grew up in Balangiga, wrote “Balangiga: How my town’s story of 117 years became my story of 65 years,” which was published in the anthology Reflections in Light and Shadow.

“My Lolo Pedro was el presidente, the town mayor, when the call of heroism beckoned to test his whole being, body and soul. At that time, war was fought like no other, with the invading enemy forces on one front and the Filipino rebels led by General Vicente Lukban on the other. His resolve to protect the townspeople from the onslaught of local rebels who would strike on the simple suspicion of siding with the foreign enemy, on the one hand, and outright disobedience to American rule, on the other, was on balance. Lolo Pedro’s conscience was a formidable force beyond the qualities of a fighter, as he was more a soldier of God, being in the service of the church as an escribiente, or church registrar, and having been raised and living a life under the shadow of religious friars.  How he ended up as one of the attacking forces, with a bolo in hand, was the ultimate life-changing sacrifice that made him a principal character, “the brains of the uprising” of this town’s history.

“My town, Balangiga, is now well-placed in the itinerary of awakened souls, never to become a howling wilderness again. It shall be remembered as a remote town that made the whole nation take a back seat. On that glorious day of December 11, 2018, the nation watched in awe the delight of the townspeople feasting while wiping their tears, cheering in a deafening roar of praise that was heard by the cool mountains afar and sending a flock of birds into the clear blue sky as they welcomed back the three church bells, the town’s soul that was unfairly taken away, to be finally seen after 117 years of longing.”

I was not yet born when the events in Balangiga happened but according to our family history, my grandfather, Col. Peñaranda, was the last Filipino infantry officer of Aguinaldo to surrender to the Americans, which finally ended the battle for Balangiga.

So, in every climb of Filipinos in their spiral of life, we must resolve to carry with pride that act of courage and heroism of our forebears. 

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