By Austin Huguelet

Wyoming Tribune Eagle

Via Wyoming News Exchange

CHEYENNE — Historic church bells seized in the Philippine-American War and brought to Cheyenne more than a century ago may soon head back across the ocean.

Defense Secretary James Mattis told Congress during the weekend he planned to return the Bells of Balangiga at a date to be determined, a congressional aide confirmed Monday.

The bells gained their notoriety in September 1901, when Filipino nationalists rang them to signal an ambush of U.S. soldiers occupying the town. Forty-eight of 74 soldiers were killed, according to the Wyoming State Historical Society, and all but four were wounded.

Army Gen. Jacob Smith responded with an order that would later see him forced into retirement: to kill every male over the age of 10 and turn Balangiga’s island of Samar into a “howling wilderness.”

When troops returned to Balangiga, they took three bells, and the 11th Infantry Regiment brought two back to Fort D.A. Russell – now F.E. Warren Air Force Base – in 1905.

The other bell is at Camp Red Cloud, an Army facility in South Korea.

The Philippines gained independence in 1946, and the country has been a close ally of its former colonizer. But the Filipino government has lobbied hard for the bells’ return in the past few decades, and recently elected President Rodrigo Duterte called them out in his State of the Nation speech last year.

“Those bells are reminders of the gallantry and heroism of our forbears who resisted the American colonizers and sacrificed their lives in the process,” he said. “They belong to the Philippines.”

Opposition from veterans groups and Wyoming representatives who have quashed similar efforts under previous administrations didn’t change after the announcement.

In a joint statement Sunday night, Rep. Liz Cheney and Sens. John Barrasso and Mike Enzi, all R-Wyo., said moving the bells would establish “a dangerous precedent for future veterans’ memorials.”

“We oppose any efforts by the Administration to move the bells to the Philippines without the support of Wyoming’s veterans community,” they added.

Todd White, a former national vice commander of the American Legion, seconded their points.

“They’re disturbing a war memorial,” said White, who lives in Worland. “Those bells have been there for 113 years, and to arbitrarily give them back the Philippines … I don’t understand that.”

Gov. Matt Mead didn’t have a statement on the matter Monday, but spokesman Chris Mickey said he had shared his view on the topic and those had not changed. In a 2012 letter to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, Mead said he strongly opposed “any efforts to deconstruct our war memorials that honor our fallen soldiers.”

But not everyone was against the idea. Sylvester Salcedo, a retired Filipino-American Navy officer who came to Cheyenne to see the bells in 2001, said Monday the U.S. was doing the right thing.

He said using the spoils of war as a memorial reflected a “perverted view of how to honor fallen American veterans,” too.

“Usually, we like to be known as the good guys, the liberators around the globe,” he said.

“And here, if people read their history properly, you’ll see the whole effort was to occupy the Philippines and undermine their own independence movement.”

Under provisions in the Fiscal Year 2018 defense spending bill, President Donald Trump can return the bells once Mattis certifies to Congress the transfer is in the country’s national security interests and “appropriate steps” have been taken to preserve the history of the veterans associated with the bells, including consultation with Wyoming organizations and officials.

Trump must also wait 90 days after certification before taking any additional action.

A spokesperson for F.E. Warren Air Force Base did not respond to questions about the move Monday.