Balangiga centennial in the print media

The three bells of Balangiga in the logo of the Balangiga Research Group (BRG).
The 1863 bell (back) and the 1889 bell (middle) are displayed at the F.E. Warren Air Force Base
in Wyoming, while the 1895 bell (front) is with the Ninth U.S. Infantry Regiment stationed
in Tongduchon, South Korea.

The Balangiga Centennial
in the Print Media

By Rolando O. Borrinaga

The mute Bells of Balangiga still rang bells around the time of the centennial commemoration of the “Balangiga Massacre” in Samar Island, Philippines, on Sept. 28, 2001. They also echoed the title of the famous 1940 novel of Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls.

The Balangiga Research Group (BRG), an informal multi-national team that has been investigating the Balangiga Conflict since 1998, has collected a total of 26 different print media articles related to the Balangiga event published in the Philippines and the U.S. during the three-month period from Aug. to Oct. 2001. (One article, when published in part or in whole in other publication/s, is only counted as one item. Also, four pictorial items in the Visayas page of the Manila Bulletin, with captions but without corresponding articles, were not included here.)

A tabulated summary of the items is found in Table 1 below.

Countries of Appearance. The BRG collected only English-language items. Nearly two-out-of-five items (10 or 38.5 percent) were published in the US, with or as on-line versions. The majority of the items (16 or 61.5 percent) were published in the Philippines.

Publications. The print media items related to Balangiga were carried by a total of 16 publications. The Philippine Daily Inquirer published nearly one-out-of-three items (8 or 30.8 percent). Today carried three items (11.5 percent), and Malaya, two (7.7 percent). Thirteen other publications each carried an item about the event.

Three articles in the Philippine Daily Inquirer (on Aug. 4, Aug. 11, and Sept. 22) each occupied three-fourths of the one-page weekly Inquirer Visayas Section on different Saturdays.

Types of Items. Nearly three-out-of-five items (15 or 57.7 percent) came out as feature stories, four (15.4 percent) as opinion columns, another four (15.4 percent) as news items, two (7.7 percent) as editorials, and one as a letter to the editor.

BRG’s Roles. The three members of the Balangiga Research Group (JeanWall, Bob Couttie, and this writer) played complementary roles in promoting publicity of the recent Balangiga centennial commemoration. They themselves contributed five (19.2 percent) of the total number of items. And their work or contributions as individuals or as a group were cited by other authors in 12 other articles (46.2 percent). Overall, the work and/or contributions of the BRG members were found in nearly two-out-of-three items (17 or 65.4 percent) that came out in the print media.

In terms of chronology, only one out of eight published items before the centennial week (Aug. 4 - Sept. 22) did not reflect the work of the BRG. These virtually set the information base for other published items about the Balangiga centennial.

In terms of content, the BRG refuted several myths and misconceptions related to the Balangiga event during the period under review. Their feats included the cracking of the puzzle of the three (not just two) Bells of Balangiga, including the discovery of independent proofs of the Balangiga origin of these relics, and the identification and analysis of deeper underlying causes that stirred up the local anger and passions that culminated in the attack on the US garrison in Balangiga on Sept. 28, 1901.

Other authors of the collected items used data and information from the BRG in inferring contemporary parallels between Balangiga and Samar in 1901 and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the US and the subsequent retaliation on Afghanistan in 2001.

The saga of Balangiga goes on while its church bells remain unreturned from the US.

Table 1. Authors, Titles of Articles, Publications, Dates, Types, and Descriptions of Contents of Balangiga-related Items in the Print Media from Aug. to Oct. 2001.

Author	Title	Publication	Date	Type of Item	Description of Content
Rolando O. Borrinaga	“Balangiga history not clear as a bell”	Philippine Daily Inquirer	Aug. 4, 2001	Feature story	"A good review of the [Balangiga Massacre] and the current state of efforts to have the bells returned," commented Jim Zwick, webmaster of the Sentenaryo/Centennial website. Also explains why only one bell was rung during the attack.
Rolando O. Borrinaga	“Solving the Balangiga bell puzzle”	Philippine Daily Inquirer	Aug. 11, 2001	Feature story	Reveals how the puzzle of the three Bells of Balangiga was solved by the Balangiga Research Group (BRG).
Rodel Rodis	“The aftermath of Balangiga”	Philippine News (US)	Aug. 29 - Sept. 4, 2001	Opinion Column	Focuses on the aftermath of Balangiga and the disputed role of its parish priest in the event.
Richard K. Kolb	“Remember Balangiga!”	VFW Magazine (US)	Sept. 2001	Feature story	Updates the Balangiga event with complementary sources from the Filipino side of the conflict.
Tina Susman (AP writer)	“Asking to whom the bells should go”	Newsday (US)	Sept. 2, 2001	Feature story (AP dispatch)	Focuses on the controversy over the Bells of Balangiga from the perspective of pro- and anti-return Americans. (Also published in whole or in part in three other US newspapers.)
Sol Jose Vanzi	“Efforts to recover bells revived”	Philippine Headline News Online (US)	Sept. 7, 2001	News item	Tells about the government’s revived efforts to recover the bells from the US and the plan for a “joint memorial” in case the bells are returned.
	“Balangiga: Mga Aningal” (Echoes of Balangiga) Art Exhibit	Philippine Daily Inquirer	Sept. 10, 2001	News item	Announcement of an art exhibit by the Atitipalo Visual Arts Group of Palo, Leyte, in Tacloban City. (Also published in Today, Sept. 18, and Sunday Inquirer Magazine, Sept. 30.)
Bob Couttie	“What went wrong in Balangiga”	Philippine Daily Inquirer	Sept. 22, 2001	Feature story	Narrates the causes of the local uprising in Balangiga and how the townsfolk were able to carry out an audacious attack on experienced US soldiers.
Lucino Rebamontan	“Arroyo to lead nation in marking centennial of Balangiga Encounter”	Manila Bulletin	Sept. 26, 2001	News item	Erroneously announces that Pres. Arroyo would lead the nation in paying tribute to freedom-loving Filipinos during the Balangiga centennial commemoration.
Mead Gruver (AP writer)	“Bells still a thorn in RP-US ties”	Philippine Daily Inquirer	Sept. 26, 2001	Feature story (AP dispatch)	Erratic story about the Balangiga event and the bells. Schott’s fictional Pedro Sanchez is in the news here. (Also published in the Los Angeles Times and in at least one other magazine in the US.)
	“For whom the Balangiga bells toll”	ABS-CBN.com	Sept. 26, 2001	Feature story	Splices Schott’s Pedro Sanchez and data from Borrinaga’s three Inquirer articles.
Peter Jaynul Villanueva Uckung	“America in the shadow of Balangiga”	Today	Sept. 27, 2001	Feature story	A mixture of facts and myths about Balangiga and a narration of the aftermath of the attack.
Vicente S. Labro and Norman Bordadora	“Remember the ‘howling wilderness’ of Balangiga”	Philippine Daily Inquirer	Sept. 28, 2001	Feature story	On the eve of the observance of the Balangiga centennial, this item names the expected guests and cites the contemporary parallels of the event (i.e., the Sept. 11 terrorist bombings).
Rolando O. Borrinaga	“Filipino victory in Balangiga recalled”	Philippine Daily Inquirer	Sept. 28, 2001	Feature story	Corrects some errors in the Aug. 4 and Aug. 11 articles and provides a summarized version of the Balangiga event and the bells issue.
Bruce Curran	“For whom the bells toll: Balangiga revisited”	Business World	Sept. 28, 2001	Feature story	Reviews the Balangiga event and its current relevance to the US using data from the Balangiga website of the BRG.
Cara Mia DiMassa	“2 sides seek relics of battle”	Los Angeles Times (US)	Sept. 28, 2001	Feature story	Focuses on the feelings of Fil-Ams based in LA about the meaning of Balangiga (ethnic identity and patriotism) in the context of the terrorist attacks in the US.
Rene A.V. Saguisag	“The bells of Balangiga”	Today	Sept. 28, 2001	Opinion Column	A refrain of the columnist’s pitch for the return of the Balangiga bells since the 1990s.
	“Struggling to recover Balangiga bells”	Today	Sept. 28, 2001	Editorial	Dramatizes the basic hope, and the hopelessness, of the efforts to get the Balangiga bells back to the Philippines.
E. Jean Wall	“When will it ring a bell with us”	Casper Star-Tribune (US)	Sept. 29, 2001	Feature story	The daughter of an American hero in Balangiga tells an updated story of the event and the bells.
Denis Murphy	“Remember the lessons of Balangiga”	Philippine Daily Inquirer	Oct. 5, 2001	Letter to the editor	A Philippines-based American development worker draws similarities between Balangiga and Samar in 1901 and the terrorist attacks in the US and Afghanistan in 2001. The US had a Pyrrhic victory in 1901. Will the war on terrorism end the same way?
Staff Sgt. Melissa Phillips	“Warren plays host to 100th anniversary of Bells of Balangiga”	Wyoming HQ.com (US)	Oct. 5, 2001	News item	The Balangiga centennial was also commemorated on Sept. 28, 2001 at the memorial where two Bells of Balangiga are displayed at the F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming. In attendance were representatives of the National Federation of Filipino-American Associations (NaFFAA) and Wyoming veterans who want to keep the bells where they are.
Bernard Karganilla	“Balangiga bedlam”	Malaya	Oct. 5, 2001	Opinion Column	The Balangiga event from a Manila perspective as premised on the Duran and Daza accounts. Balangiga was a “raid” (not a “massacre”) on Sept. 29 (not 28), 1901, etc.
Bernard Karganilla	“Balangiga rebound”	Malaya	Oct. 8, 2001	Opinion Column	Same as the above item.
Rodel E. Rodis	“Bring home the Bells of Balangiga”	Filipinas Magazine (US)	Oct. 2001	Feature story	A Fil-Am writer reviews the campaign for the return of the Balangiga bells to the Philippines and the efforts of NaFFAA to make this possible.
Joseph G. Lariosa	“The Bells of Balangiga: A century-old hostage of ignorance, pride and fury”	Philippine TIME Magazine (US)	Oct. 15, 2001	Feature story	An updated Balangiga story based on current data made available by the BRG, including its contemporary meanings and parallel events (i.e., terrorist attacks in the US and the retaliation on Afghanistan).
Roberto Reyes Mercado	“America at war in 2001 and 1901: The good that came out of the 1901 conflict; Can Afghanistan become another Philippines?”	Yimby.com	Oct. 2001	Editorial essay	The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the US and the retaliation on Afghanistan in 2001 are virtual reprises of Balangiga and Samar in 1901. Will Afghanistan, a present enemy, evolve into a future US ally, just like the Philippines after 1901?

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