HISTORY

In the morning of Saturday (not the mythic Sunday), Sept. 28, 1901, hundreds of native fighters armed with bolos, some of them disguised as churchgoing women, staged a successful surprise attack on US troops while most of them were eating breakfast in Balangiga at the southern coast of Samar Island.
Described as the "worst single defeat" of the US military in the Philippines, that event became known in history as the Balangiga Massacre.
The natives fought to resist the destruction or confiscation and rationing of their food stocks and to free about 80 male residents who had been rounded up for forced labor and detained for days in crowded conditions with little food and water.


The US troops belonged to Company C, 9th US Infantry Regiment, who were stationed in Balangiga to keep its small port closed and prevent any trading. Their mission was to deprive the Filipino revolutionary forces of supplies during the Philippine-American War, which had spread to the Visayas.
An elite unit, Company C performed as honor guard during the historic July 4, 1901 inauguration of the American civil government in the Philippines and the installation as first civil governor of William Howard Taft, later president of the US.
They arrived in Balangiga a few weeks later, on Aug. 11.

The attacking force, coordinated by Valeriano Abanador, the local chief of police, was composed of around 500 men in seven different companies. They represented virtually all families of Balangiga, whose outlying villages then included the present towns of Lawaan and Giporlos, and of Quinapundan, a town served by the priest in Balangiga.

Some of the leaders, notably Capt. Eugenio Daza, were revolutionary officers under the command of Brig. Gen. Vicente Lukban, the politico-military governor of Samar who was appointed by President Emilio Aguinaldo.

The ringing of the church bell signaled the attack. Fierce fighting ensued, resulting in one of the biggest number of American casualties in a single encounter.

Of the 74 men of Company C, 36 were killed during the attack, eight of the wounded died later during the escape by bancas to Basey town, and four were missing and presumed dead.

Of the 26 survivors, only four were not wounded.

The natives suffered 28 fatalities and 22 wounded.

The bell was taken from the church belfry a day after the attack by US reinforcement troops from Basey and was brought by the survivors to the US as war booty.

Thus, the three bells of Balangiga at the time of the 1901 attack have now been traced, including their points of entry to the US. But the mystery of only one bell ringing during the attack itself still persists.
In many rural Philippine towns, the smallest of three church bells was routinely allowed by parish priests to be used to call people to public meetings or civic and non-religious activities, such as communal street cleaning, or to alert them in cases of emergency, like fire or flood.
A repeated ringing of the small bell signified a non-religious activity.