Balangiga Massacre - Retaliation

Retaliation

The next day, Captain Edwin Victor Bookmiller, the commander in Basey, sailed with Company G, 9th Infantry Regiment for Balangiga aboard a commandeered coastal steamer, the SS Pittsburgh. Finding the town abandoned, they buried the American dead and set fire to the town.

Coming at a time when it was believed Filipino resistance to American rule had collapsed, the Balangiga attack had a powerful impact on Americans living in Manila. Men started to wear sidearms openly and Helen Herron Taft, wife of William Howard Taft, was so distraught she required evacuation to Hong Kong.

The Balangiga incident provoked shock in the US public, too, with newspapers equating the massacre to George Armstrong Custer's last stand at the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876. Major General Adna R. Chaffee, military governor of the Philippines, received orders from US President Theodore Roosevelt to pacify Samar. To this end, Chaffee appointed Brigadier General Jacob H. Smith to Samar to accomplish the task.

General Smith instructed Major Littleton Waller, commanding officer of a battalion of 315 US Marines assigned to bolster his forces in Samar, regarding the conduct of pacification:

The order was, however, countermanded by Waller.

As a consequence of this order, Smith became known as "Howling Wilderness Smith". He further ordered Waller to kill all persons who were capable of bearing arms and in actual hostilities against the United States forces. When queried by Waller regarding the age limit of these persons, Smith replied that the limit was ten years of age.

Food and trade to Samar were cut off, intended to starve the revolutionaries into submission. Smith's strategy on Samar involved widespread destruction to force the inhabitants to stop supporting the guerrillas and turn to the Americans from fear and starvation. He used his troops in sweeps of the interior in search for guerrilla bands and in attempts to capture Philippine General Vicente Lukban, but he did nothing to prevent contact between the guerrillas and the townspeople. American columns marched across the island, destroying homes and shooting people and draft animals. Littleton Waller, in a report, stated that over an eleven-day period his men burned 255 dwellings, shot 13 carabaos and killed 39 people.

The Judge Advocate General of the Army observed that only the good sense and restraint of the majority of Smith's subordinates prevented a complete reign of terror in Samar. However, the abuses were still sufficient to outrage anti-Imperialist groups in the United States when these became known in March 1902.

The exact number of Filipinos killed by US troops will never be known. A population shortfall of about 15,000 is apparent between the Spanish census of 1887 and the American census of 1903 but how much of the shortfall is due to a disease epidemic and known natural disasters and how many due to combat is difficult to determine. Population growth in 19th century Samar was amplified by an influx of workers for the booming hemp industry, an influx which certainly ceased during the Samar campaign.

Exhaustive research in the 1990s made by British writer Bob Couttie as part of a ten year study of the Balangiga Massacre tentatively put the figure at about 2,500; David Fritz used population ageing techniques and suggested a figure of a little more than 2,000 losses in males of combat age but nothing to support widespread killing of women and children Some Filipino historians believe it to be around 50,000. The rate of Samar's population growth slowed as refugees fled from Samar to Leyte, yet still the population of Samar increased by 21,456 during the war.

The earliest reference to a 50,000 plus death toll is American historian Kenneth Ray Young.

American military historians' opinions on the Samar campaign are echoed in the February 2011 edition of the US Army's official historical magazine, Army History Bulletin: "...the indiscriminate violence and punishment that U.S. Army and Marine forces under Brig. Gen. Jacob Smith are alleged to have unleashed on Samar have long stained the memory of the United States’ pacification of the Philippine Islands".