Philippines wants church bells back

Philippines wants church bells back

MANILA (AP): The Philippines will keep pressing to retrieve
historic church bells taken by U.S. troops in 1901, President
Fidel Ramos said yesterday after failing to work out the relics'
return in a U.S. visit.

The bells were taken when American forces counterattacked a
group of Filipino guerrillas in the central town of Balangiga.
The Philippines was a U.S. commonwealth at the time.

The bells were used in 1901 by Filipino guerrillas to signal
an attack on U.S. infantrymen stationed in Balangiga. The attack
killed at least 54 Americans.

U.S. troops counterattacked, burning down the town and killing
hundreds of people. The troops took the town's church bells and a
cannon, which are now displayed at the F.E. Warren Air Force Base
in Cheyenne, Wyoming, as a memorial to the soldiers killed in
Balangiga.