J. Franklin Bell - Alleged War Crimes

Alleged War Crimes

During the Philippine-American War, Brigadier General J. Franklin Bell told the New York Times on May 1, 1901 that

"One-sixth of the natives of Luzon have either been killed or have died of the dengue fever in the last two years. The loss of life by killing alone has been great, but I think that not one man has been slain except were his death served the legitimate purposes of war. It has been necessary to adopt what other countries would probably be thought harsh measures, for the Filipino is tricky and crafty and has to be fought in his own way."

A few months after the Balangiga Massacre of September 1901, President Theodore Roosevelt ordered Bell's commander General Adna Chaffee to adopt, "in no unmistakable terms," "the most stern measures to pacify Samar."

On December 7, 1901, Bell wrote a letter beginning with this introduction:

"the United States Government, disregarding many provocations to do otherwise, has for three years exercised an extraordinary forbearance and patiently adhered to a magnanimous and benevolent policy toward the inhabitants of the territory occupied by this brigade"

Bell followed this disclaimer with a long list of Filipino breaches against the laws of civilized warfare. The Filipinos had broken General Order No. 100. The Filipinos had broken Article 63 by wearing civilian clothes with no special markings and returning home between battles and "divesting themselves of the character and appearance of soldiers...concealing their arms...posing as peaceful citizens...They have improvised and secreted in the vicinity of roads and trails rudely constructed infernal machines propelling poisoned arrows or darts." Even the destruction of telegraph wires and bridges violated, in Bell's opinion, some section of Lincoln's General Orders. The time had come to fight fire with fire Bell declared. America should "severely punish, in the same or lesser degree, the commission of acts denounced in the aforementioned articles." In other words, Bell went on record as planning to violate General Order No. 100 and the accepted tactics of civilized warfare.

Bell elaborated on these orders in a series of circulars, which specifically bestowed on his station commanders the right to retaliate.

One circular by Bell explained, when an American was "murdered", soldiers were instructed to "by lot select a P.O.W.--preferably one from the village in which the assassination took place--and execute him."

Another circular rationalized that "it is an inevitable consequence of war that the innocent must generally suffer with the guilty" and that "a short and severe war creates in the aggregate less loss and suffering than a benevolent war indefinitely prolonged."

Bell warned his commanders that young officers should not be restrained or discouraged without excellent reason. "It is not necessary to seek or wait for authority from headquarters to do anything or take any action which will contribute to the end in view."

Bell reasoned that since all natives were treacherous, it was impossible to recognize "the actively bad from only the passively so."

Chaffee received copies of Bell's directive and was aware of Bell's plan to launch a war of extermination.

Most notable of Bell's numerous engagements with the Filipinos was that near Porac in the island of Luzon, in which he was wounded while leading a charge. As was described by Gore Vidal in his books:

:It was American policy at the turn of the century to kill as many Filipinos as possible. The rationale was straightforward: "With a very few exceptions, practically the entire population has been hostile to us at heart," wrote Brigadier General J. Franklin Bell, a propos our seizure of the Philippines. "In order to combat such a population, it is necessary to make the state of war as insupportable as possible, and there is no more efficacious way of accomplishing this than by keeping the minds of the people in such a state of anxiety and apprehension that living under such conditions will soon become intolerable." The comparison of this highly successful operation with our less successful adventure in Vietnam was made by, among others, Bernard Fall, who referred to our conquest of the Philippines as "the bloodiest colonial war (in proportion to population) ever fought by a white power in Asia; it cost the lives of 3,000,000 Filipinos." (cf. E. Ahmed's "The Theory and Fallacies of Counter-Insurgency," The Nation, August 2, 1971.) General Bell himself, the old sweetheart, estimated that we killed one-sixth of the population of the main island of Luzon—some 600,000 people.

Now a Mr. Creamer quotes a Mr. Hill ("who grew up in Manila," presumably counting skulls) who suggests that the bodycount for all the islands is 300,000 men, women, and children—or half what General Bell admitted to.

I am amused to learn that I have wandered "so far from easily verified fact." There are no easily verified facts when it comes to this particular experiment in genocide. At the time when I first made reference to the 3,000,000 (NYR, October 18, 1973), a Filipino wrote me to say she was writing her master's thesis on the subject. She was inclined to accept Fall's figures but she said that since few records were kept and entire villages were totally destroyed, there was no way to discover, exactly, those "facts" historians like to "verify." In any case, none of this is supposed to have happened and so, as far as those history books that we use to indoctrinate the young go, it did not happen."

Gore Vidal''

Despite his alleged war crimes, the U.S. awarded Bell the Medal of Honor, for "gallantry in action".