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US Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis officially returned Wednesday to the Philippines church bells taken as war trophies more than a century ago in the aftermath of horrific clashes, while the United States seeks to close a disputed chapter in the common history of the two allies.
The decision to return the "Balangiga bells" to the Philippines ends a decades-long quest by Manila, including President Rodrigo Duterte, and is expected to strengthen relations between the United States and the Philippines.
But he thwarted some US veterans and the Wyoming delegation to the US Congress, who consistently opposed the recall of the bells recalling the 45 American soldiers killed in a surprise attack on September 28, 1901 in the central city of Balangiga.
Two of the three bells were exposed at F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming. The third bell is in a US Army Museum in South Korea.
Courage "timeless"
Mattis, speaking at a ceremony held on the basis of the air force to which the Philippines' ambassador to the United States attended, said that the Philippines has Had proven to be an excellent ally of the United States in the conflicts that had occurred in the last century since that confrontation. He said the sacrifices of US forces would not be forgotten.
"For those who are afraid of losing something by making those bells, please, hear me when I say: The bells are marking time, but the courage is timeless," Mattis said. "It does not fade in the dimly lit hallways of history."
In Manila, the Philippine Foreign Affairs Department welcomed this decision.
"Today, we solemnly commemorate what we pay tribute to all those who gave their lives during the Philippine-American War," he said.
The Wyoming Congress delegation, who did not attend the ceremony, issued a terse statement.
"We continue to oppose the administration's efforts to move the bells to the Philippines without the support of the Wyoming Veterans community," Senators Mike Enzi and John Barrasso and Representative Liz Cheney said in a statement. joint declaration.
The three ringtones will be reinstated and handed over to the Philippines as early as December, said Joe Felter, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for South and Southeast Asia.
A flawless staySurprise attack, bloody counterattack
The 1901 attack in Balangiga, on the Philippine island of Samar, was considered the worst shipment of American soldiers since the Battle of Little Bighorn in 1876, also known as the Last Stand of Custer.
According to historians, one or more of the church bells would have rang to signal Balangiga's attack.
Historians say US forces took the bells after a brutal counter-attack that killed hundreds of thousands of people in the Philippines. An American general would have ordered his troops to "make the interior of Samar a wilderness."
Some Wyoming veterans, such as Cheryl Shannon at Veterans of Foreign Wars, said they were fine with the decision to return the bells.
"We have enough that this is still a problem," said Shannon, a veteran of the war in Iraq.
But Hank Miller, a VFW veteran who wanted to keep the bells in Wyoming, said general support for his position had faded by the time it became clear that Washington was going to return the bells.
"I was advised to" stop fighting to win "and" stop hitting a dead horse "as the bells returned," Miller told Reuters.
