THE three Balangiga Bells, taken as a war booty by American soldiers from the Eastern Samar town with the same name in 1901, are scheduled to land at the Villamor Airbase in Pasay City today before finally returning home on Dec. 14. President Rodrigo R. Duterte will attend the Saturday homecoming ceremony, but will skip the turnover in Pasay as earlier announced, according to Presidential Spokesperson Salvador S. Panelo. In a press briefing on Monday, US Embassy in Manila Spokesperson Molly Koscina said the return of the bells was “the right thing to do” and that “is really in line with American Values.” Two of the bells had been part of a memorial for fallen US veterans located in Wyoming, USA. The third bell was in a US military base in South Korea. “They will have replicas of the original bells,” Ms. Koscina said. “There have been a number of presidents that have worked on the return of the Balangiga bells. A number of secretaries of Defense, a number of Philippine and US ambassadors. It’s been decades worth of work and decades of US veterans protesting to the return of the bells,” she said. — Gillian M. Cortez and Arjay L. Balinbin

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