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Manila: Opposition Senator Aquilino Pimentel asked President Gloria Arroyo to form a negotiating panel that will ask the US to return three old bells that were taken by American soldiers as war booties from Samar, in central Philippines, 107 years ago.
"The president must do this now. The Senate has already approved a resolution urging the executive level to negotiate with the United States for the return of three bells to the Catholic parish church in Balangiga, Eastern Samar," Pimentel said.
Pimentel said he filed the resolution to compel the executive level to initiate and lead the negotiation with the US government, adding the recovery of the historic bells has not materialised despite a persistent lobbying by the Philippine government.
On September 28, 1901, some 500 revolutionaries from Balangiga and nearby villages in Samar overran a US Army garrison in Balangiga.
About 50 of the 74 American soldiers in the garrison were killed and 22 others were wounded. Some of the American soldiers escaped by boat and sought refuge in another US detachment in nearby Basey town.
The US Army sent General Jacob Smith for a retaliatory attack. He ordered his men to kill all residents there aged 10 years old and above, burn houses, shoot animals and burn crops. Historians described Balangiga as a "howling wilderness" during Smith's attack.
The American soldiers took three church bells as war trophies when they left Samar. The bells bore the emblem of the Franciscan order, and the following dates: 1853, 1889, and 1896.
The first two bells are now on display at the F.E. Warren Air Force base in Cheyenne, Wyoming. The third bell is on display at the headquarters of the 9th Infantry Regiment of the US Army in Camp Red Cloud, South Korea.
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