By Bernadette D. Nicolas & Recto Mercene
Malacañang said on Sunday that President Duterte is expected to lead the handover ceremony of the historic Balangiga bells by the United States to the Philippines on December 11.
“The Palace enthusiastically awaits the arrival of the Balangiga bells to the country on Tuesday, December 11,” Presidential Spokesman and Chief Presidential Legal Counsel Salvador S. Panelo said in a statement.
It was the President who demanded the return of the Balangiga bells to the Philippines during his second State of the Nation Address last year.
“We consider the occasion as an affirmation of our strong and enduring relations with our long-standing ally, the United States, as we thank them for this gesture that would formally put a closure to a tragic and contentious episode in both our countries’ history,” Panelo said.
The church bells left Wyoming on November 15 and are expected to be delivered to military officials during a ceremony at Villamor Air Base on Tuesday.
Philippine Ambassador to the US Jose Manuel “Babe” Romualdez said the bells would be flown from Okinawa, Japan, to Villamor Air Base. US Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for South and Southeast Asia Joseph Felter is expected to attend the handover ceremony.
Defense Secretary Delfin N. Lorenzana confirmed the arrival of the church bells last week, although he is unsure of the type of the aircraft that would be used to transport the bells.
Released photographs of the bells showed that the bells were taken away from the Warren Air Force Base in Cheyenne, Wyoming. The bells were crated and wrapped before being loaded on a truck bound for the airport.
‘War booty’
According to the web site of the Wyoming State Historical Society, two of the the three Balangiga bells have been on display at the F.E. Warren Air Force Base since 1905. The third bell was displayed at the US Army’s Camp Red Cloud in Uijeongbu, South Korea.
The bells were taken by American soldiers from its perch on a church in Balangiga, Samar, in 1901. The church bells were used by Filipino revolutionaries to signal an attack on American soldiers.
In an interview with CNN Philippines last week, Romualdez said the President personally told US Defense Secretary James Mattis to return the bells to the country during an Association of Southeast Asian Nations meeting in Clark, Pampanga, in October 2017.
The envoy added Mattis was at the forefront of the process of returning the bells to the Philippines, which became possible after a 1998 US law barring the return of the war articles expired in September 2017.
He said they had to wait for 90 days after the law expired to allow any appeal to be made against the return of the bells.
Henry Howard, Dennis Wright and Brian Buzzell of the US-Philippines Society were also instrumental in the return of the Balangiga Bells as they lobbied American lawmakers to remove the legal barriers against it,
Romualdez said. Romualdez said Lorenzana plans to put the bells on display for public viewing before these are returned to the Balangiga Church.
“I think this is very historical and very important for both countries to put closure to it. But more importantly, I think, this is a symbol of the kind of respect, the mutual respect, for our sovereignty as a nation that is being given to us by the United States,” he said.