At the end of the 1898 war with Spain, the United States took possession of the Philippines. That acquisition was disputed by some (not all) of the Filipino people, and a three-year war ensued. The very name of that war is still debated. To the Army, and the civilian officers of the U.S. government, it was the Philippine Insurrection. The United States owned the islands, so the Filipino soldiers were rebels against legitimate authority. Most modern historians prefer to call it the Philippine-American War, treating it as a conflict between two sovereign nations. But the Navy Department calls it simply the Philippine Campaign. It is so named on the medal that was awarded to sailors and Marines who served there, in block letters above a lovely depiction of the Old Spanish Gate at Manila.

There is another image of the Philippine Campaign. A firing squad of six huge Marines levels their rifles on four barefoot, blindfolded Filipino children. A mustachioed officer raises his sword to one side, about to give the command to fire. "Kill everyone over ten", the cartoon is titled. "Criminals because they were born ten years before we took the Philippines", the legend reads. It has come to symbolize the conduct of Major L.W.T. Waller, U.S.M.C., in the operation known to history as the “Burning of Samar”.



There is a good reason why this awful image exists only in the form of an editorial cartoon. There is no evidence that anything like this ever actually happened.

Littleton Waller Tazewell Waller (1856-1926), universally known as Tony, was one of the most controversial officers in the history of the U.S. Marine Corps. From the Spanish-American War to World War One, from Cuba to China, Waller was everywhere. He was decorated both for valor in action and for saving lives at the risk of his own. He was also a heavy drinker and a particularly ugly racist. His sense of discipline meant that he never questioned why he was fighting in other people's countries, and his treatment of war as a great adventure is incomprehensible today. It is easy to see him, and his fellow officers, as nineteenth-century gunslingers with no concern for the people they saw as inferiors. Above all, his memory deserves to be rescued from the disgrace of this fictitious atrocity story.

The Setting

On May 1, 1898, the U.S. Navy's Asiatic Squadron, under Commodore George Dewey, defeated the Spanish fleet at Manila Bay. But Dewey had no landing force available to occupy Manila, and other fleets were edging in on the Philippines with an eye to taking possession. After consultation with Washington, Dewey brought exiled rebel leader Emilio Aguinaldo back to the Philippines to set up a government, which, by allying itself with the United States, would forestall any European or Japanese maneuvers. Aguinaldo would later claim that he had been promised complete independence for the Philippines, while Dewey would insist that an American protectorate, with only limited internal self-government, was always the understood arrangement. That arrangement served both American and Filipino interests, but Aguinaldo could not accept it. On June 12, 1898, he proclaimed independence and the Philippine Insurrection began.

American businessmen saw the islands as a source of raw materials and a potential market, and also as a way station to the even more lucrative markets in China. For their part, the landed and business classes of the Philippines saw in America the guardian of the capitalist system, which would provide a framework of law to protect their property. Aguinaldo could look to two sources of recruits for his resistance to the American takeover. They were the peasants, who had hoped for land reform at the end of Spanish rule, and the intellectuals, who cherished the unrealistic dream that their mineral-rich and strategically located country would be left alone by the great powers.

The Americans brought increased personal freedom to the Filipinos, but always within a context of the rule of law and the sanctity of property. The people who had been rich under the Spanish banner would be richer under the Stars and Stripes, but now their business and banking would be conducted through American channels. First, however, the peasants had to be reminded of their rightful place, and the intellectual dreamers made to see reality. This unpleasant task fell, as it always does, to the armed forces.

On Samar, third largest of the Philippine Islands, General Vicente Lukban and Lt. Col. Eugenio Daza led the war against the Americans. They were not Muslims, as is commonly reported (1). The term “Moros” applied to them and their men was American propaganda. Unwilling to admit that Christian Filipinos could oppose America’s interests, the U.S. government encouraged the fiction that only Muslims were active in the Insurrection. Lukban, Daza, all of their men, and indeed most of the inhabitants of Samar were Roman Catholics. Nor were they headhunters or cannibals. They were farmers and fishermen, living in what then as now was the poorest and most rural of the Philippine provinces. Lurid tales of Filipino rebels maiming and torturing captives, and disemboweling or dismembering the enemy’s dead, were complete fiction. These stories were intentionally fabricated with the intention of inflaming the passions of an American public who, as a contemporary humorist noted, were uncertain whether the Philippines were islands or canned goods (2).

On September 28, 1901, Daza and his men attacked the U.S. Army garrison at Balangiga, on the south coast of Samar. The soldiers were taken completely by surprise, and fifty-four of the seventy-four men present were killed. The survivors escaped in boats. The attack was widely reported in the United States, often in pulp-fiction terms, and the public reaction was predictable indignation. Major General Adna R. Chaffee, Commander of the Department of the Philippines, established the Sixth Separate Brigade, including Waller's First Marine Battalion, to end the Insurrection in Samar. Chaffee gave command of the brigade to Brigadier General Jacob H. Smith, who was soon regaling the newspaper correspondents with promises to turn Samar into a "howling wilderness", "a wilderness where not even a bird could live."

He made this an order, according to the testimony at Waller's court martial (3). One of Waller's company commanders, Captain David Dixon Porter, testified for the defense:

Q: Captain Porter, in the course of your previous testimony you stated that the orders issued by Major Waller ... were covered by the verbal conversation which Major Waller had had with General Smith. I should like you now to state ... how severe the policy to be pursued in Samar was to be.
A: He said: "Kill and burn", and he repeated it, --- "Kill and burn. The more you kill and the more you burn, the better you please me."
Q: Who said that?
A: General Smith.
Q: Had you any conversation with Major Waller subsequent to this in regard to who were to be killed?
A: He told me that he had instructions to kill everyone over ten years old, but he said: "We are not making war against women and children, Porter; we are making war against men capable of bearing arms."

The court now asked Porter:

Q: Did you, yourself, hear General Smith use the words: "Kill and burn -- kill and burn. The more you kill and the more you burn, the better you please me?"
A: I quoted the exact words of General Smith.
Q: You heard him say this, yourself?
A: I heard him. He told this to Major Waller and myself.
Q: In your presence?
A: In my presence. I say he told it to me.


The Charge

Professor Dr. Rolando O. Borrinaga, a member of the faculty of the University of the Philippines, is a recognized authority on Philippine history and chairman of the Balangiga Research Group. He describes Waller’s actions thus:

Implemented by the Sixth Separate Brigade under Brig. Gen. Jacob H. Smith of the US Army, which included a battalion of US Marines under Maj. Littleton T. W. Waller (sic), the campaign was blamed for the alleged disappearance of some 50,000 people in Samar. (4)

Who blamed “the campaign”, and what exactly is an “alleged disappearance”? Another historian, Dr. Victor Nebrida, wrote that:

General Smith instructed Major Littleton Waller … to cleanup the island of Samar …what followed was a sustained and widespread killing of Filipino civilians. … The Balangiga Massacre still means in American history books the killing of forty-eight Americans, not the killing of tens of thousands of Filipino civilians. (5)

Again, there is no evidence given of “sustained and widespread killing of Filipino civilians”, numbering in the "tens of thousands".

The story, still undocumented and unsubstantiated, has been picked up by American scholars.

High school and college texts … rarely pay important attention to the eight-year war to conquer the Philippines, a bloody affair that in many ways resembled the war in Vietnam. The United States killed hundreds of thousands of Filipinos in the war, but U.S. casualties were under 5,000. (6)

The war lasted three years, not eight. Resemblances to the war in Viet Nam are not specified at all, although there were “many” of them. And now we’re up to “hundreds of thousands” of dead Filipinos.

In the Philippines … the United States used over seventy thousand men, about four times the number fielded during the 1898 conflict. Ironically, more U.S. troops died in this bloody contest than had in 1898. As Congressional testimony revealed, the occupiers regularly used torture, and U.S. soldiers under orders from their officers wiped out whole villages of men, women, and children. The My Lai massacre in Vietnam was not just the work of a single crazed U.S. Lieutenant, but one in a long line of atrocities committed by U.S. troops in the Philippines, Haiti, Santo Domingo, and elsewhere. (7)

The first two sentences of this paragraph are true. The rest is completely fabricated. The Congressional hearings found documentary evidence that three Army officers (and no Marines) had used torture to extract information, and had stood trial for it. It is safe to assume that there were other unreported incidents. But there is no evidence that torture was “regularly” used, nor officially sanctioned. There is no evidence that officers ordered villages to be “wiped out”, nor that any villages actually were. But the real point is that Lieutenant Calley, whose crimes no one disputes, exemplifies an ongoing policy of American genocide in the third world.

The Philippine islands … became a colony. McKinley … launched a war for American domination. … The policy of forcing villagers into concentration camps, introduced by Spain's General Weyler in Cuba, was one of America's humanitarian justifications for war with Spain. The United States corralled Filipinos into similar camps and sixty years later, under the name of "strategic hamlets," did the same to the Vietnamese. It used "water torture" and turned vast areas of the islands into free-fire zones where civilians were liable to be shot on sight. (8)

The colonial status of the Philippines and the campaign to dominate them are facts of history. The use of “concentration camps”, however (and they were invented by the British in South Africa, not by Weyler) was apparently of very short duration, and occurred only in the province of Batangas. The “strategic hamlets” of Viet Nam were built and administered by the Saigon government, not the Americans. I must comment on the famous cliché, “free-fire zone”. In a career in the Marines of twenty-one years (1968-1989), I never saw that phrase in any official instruction. On the contrary, the rules of engagement given to members of the U.S. armed forces are quite restrictive, especially in populated areas. No competent authority has ever published any order allowing American soldiers to fire indiscriminately in areas where civilians live. The burden of proof is on those who claim such a policy existed, or was understood to exist.

In a 1997 essay Dr. Reynaldo S. Galang specifies the deaths in Samar:

…the 6th Separate Brigade … systematically burned villages in the interior, destroying food, slaughtering work animals and killing many of the civilian inhabitants. Samar’s population dropped from 312,192 to 257, 715. Major Waller’s campaign of blood ended with the unwarranted execution of 11 Filipinos, whom he accused of treachery. (9)

Even at the time, the public appetite for atrocity stories found sustenance:

Of Major Waller, the Manila Times of March 15, 1902, reported: "In several instances natives, who were captured were tied to trees and submitted to a series of slow tortures that finally resulted in death, in some instances the victims living for three or four days. The treatment was the most cruel and brutal imaginable: Natives were tied to the trees, and, in order to make them give confessions, they were shot through the legs and left thus to suffer through the night, only to be given a repetition of the treatment the next day, in some instances the treatment lasting as long as four days before the miserable creatures were relieved by death." (10)

This lurid story is filled with internal contradictions. How could the Marine column, moving as quickly as possible after the guerrillas, afford to spend "three or four days" torturing some hapless villager in order to secure his "confession"? What could he “confess”? If he was a rebel himself, he could be shot out of hand. If he did not accompany the guerrillas, he would have no firm knowledge of where they were. If you’re going to torture people, and kill them, without any semblance of a trial, why would you need confessions? And by the way, where did this report come from? No journalists, of the Manila Times nor any other paper, accompanied the Marine battalion in Samar. On 15 March 1902, the Marines were back in Subic Bay, having been detached from the Sixth Brigade on 01 March. Frankly, it sounds as if a correspondent from the Times had met up with a few Marines in a bar in Olongapo. He treated them to some drinks, and they treated him to a sea story. Unfortunately, the story affects the reputation of the Corps a century later.


Why is this topic important? Let Dr. Borrinaga provide the answer:

The Philippine-American War in our region largely remains a hidden facet of our history. But it was one conflict that we should remember and learn lessons from because it was the greater war in our local history. Compared to civilian casualties during World War II, I had estimated that a dozen times more civilians in our region perished as a consequence of that earlier war. … Considered one of the worst defeats in American military history, the Filipino victory in Balangiga was followed by a shameful episode that would be replicated in sensational but smaller scale massacres of Asians by Americans soldiers in No Gun Ri, Korea in 1950 and My Lai, Vietnam, in 1968. … Today, the Balangiga Massacre remains a largely forgotten episode of a forgotten war. Even the spate of publicity around the two "Bells of Balangiga"…whose return …was requested by the Philippine government, barely stirred the Filipinos from their collective amnesia. (11)

This is the real agenda. The Philippine Campaign must be shown to be part of an ongoing series of American atrocities. Dr. Borrinaga “estimated” that the Americans killed “a dozen times more” civilians than the Japanese did, and this assessment is “widely believed” in Samar. What is his basis for that estimate? He never offers proof, but simply makes the statement of “alleged disappearance” as an accepted fact. Figures are cited - “some fifty thousand”, “as many as fifty thousand”, “tens of thousands”, “hundreds of thousands”. Where do these figures come from? Battles and massacres leave evidence, of human remains and destroyed structures, but none have been found. Why does no one in Samar seem to remember this atrocity, and why have Philippine political figures, some openly anti-American, not taken our country to task for it? Dr. Borrinaga has the answer - “collective amnesia”. Rolando Borrinaga is a doctor of medicine, but he does not define nor explain his diagnosis.

All of these sources could be dismissed as left wing and anti-military. Recently, a distinguished historian who is certainly neither repeated the old charges. James Bradley, son of the Iwo Jima flag raiser John Bradley and author of the magnificent Flags of Our Fathers and the new book Flyboys, had this to say in a television interview:

"I received a degree in history ... and I managed to graduate without every hearing about the massacre of 250,000 people by the U.S. Army in the Philippines. ... The U.S. Army had orders to kill all Filipino males at the age of ten. It seems that they were all right when they were only nine, but as soon as they turned ten they became really dangerous." (12)

If a patriotic American is willing to admit his country’s failings, we should applaud his open-mindedness. There’s only one problem. James Bradley is pleading us guilty to a crime that never occurred, and his research is surprisingly limited. The discussion of the Philippine Campaign in Flyboys is only four pages long, and most of it consists of a repetition of atrocity stories. And they are juicy ones, too. They range from shooting people for target practice (“better than rabbits”, according to one marksman who is, of course, not identified) to the systematic gang rape of a beautiful woman (who is passed on to the enlisted men after the officers tire of her). Do these stories sound familiar? They should. They have been standard fare of propagandists since Roman times. Not one of these thrilling yarns has any documentary attribution as to time or place, participants or witnesses. Bradley cites only two sources for his stories, and to say that these writers have an agenda is putting it mildly. One is “Benevolent Assimilation”: The American Conquest of the Philippines, 1899-1903, by Stuart Creighton Miller. The other is Richard Drinnon’s Facing West: The Metaphysics of Indian-Hating and Empire-Building. The sarcastic quotation marks in the first title and the blatant subtitle of the second book make the viewpoint obvious. A reviewer says this of Drinnon’s “tremendous feat of scholarship”:

From John Endicott's war on the Niantics and Pequots, to the horrors of the My Lai massacre, Drinnon illustrates, with passion, power and unrelenting wit, how Indian-hating in the Americas became a national pastime, and how that same hate was turned against the native populations of the Philippines and Southeast Asia.

Passion, power and unrelenting wit are appropriate to a novel. Historical works should have scholarship, but there’s none of that here. Another reviewer hails Benevolent Assimilation as the “template for imperialism and modern imperial war”, and says of it:

While many scholars and "military analysts" have written up this war, none have done a more exhaustive job than Miller in detailing the rapacious American conquest of the Philippines. As Miller aptly points out, the war served as the very template of later wars in Vietnam, and frighteningly, today’s "war on terrorism". (13)

What’s frightening is that unsubstantiated atrocity stories are accepted as fact just because they fit an agenda. Ever since the revelation of the Nazi Holocaust, scholars have taken pains to point out that it’s not just the Germans who are guilty, that all mankind shares the blame. But the atrocious behavior of the German armed forces was the official policy of their government. How many German soldiers were tried by the Hitler regime for criminal acts against civilians in the Nazi empire? The answer, of course, is none. By contrast, the United States has never established a policy that allowed killing of anyone but enemy combatants, nor the torture or maltreatment of any persons. What about General Smith’s “kill and burn” order? The record shows that it was never official, it was not implemented, and when it became publicly known the general himself was tried by court martial and forced into retirement.

Sometimes the defenders of the American soldiers are as misguided as their attackers. An article by Lt. Col. Merrill L. Bartlett, USMC (Ret), begins by saying, “It may prove useful, amusing, or even outrageously irrelevant to apply today’s standards of political correctness to the Marines of an earlier era”. Here is his discussion of Waller:

War crimes, or violations of the normal laws of land warfare, rarely have been politically correct. Three such instances involved Old-Corps Marines. The celebrated case of Major Littleton Waller Tazewell Waller remains the best known. On 28 September 1901, a group of Filipinos on the island of Samar wiped out a company of the 9th Infantry at Balangiga. In response, the military governor of the Philippines ordered the formation of a suitable force under Army Brigadier General Jacob H. Smith to seek retribution. Caught in the spirit of the moment, the admiral commanding the Asiatic Fleet offered to provide a battalion of Marines.

The colonel commanding at Cavite selected Major Waller, one of the Corps’ most spirited and pugnacious officers, to lead the 15 officers and 300 enlisted men. Smith’s instructions to Waller left no doubt as to the severity expected during the punitive campaign: “The more you kill and burn, the more it will please me.” Stunned, Waller asked “Hell Roaring Jake” Smith just what constituted a Filipino insurgent targeted for elimination and received the grave reply that “any Filipino male over age ten” satisfied that criteria.

Waller and his Marines accomplished their mission, burning villages and shooting Filipinos. Then, Waller split his small force to map potential telegraph routes across the dense interior of southern Samar. Waller, 4 of his own officers, 50 enlisted Marines, a lieutenant and a handful of soldiers from the 7th Infantry, 2 native scouts, and 33 native bearers struck out across Samar. As conditions worsened, and the force dwindled - by then, 11 Americans had died along the jungle trail - Waller grew increasingly convinced that the Filipino bearers were bordering on mutiny. After one of them attempted to strike an officer with a bolo, Waller ordered 11 of the Filipinos executed.

Already under intense criticism for its harsh colonial policy in its newfound possession, the administration of President Theodore Roosevelt looked askance at the incident. Returning to Cavite, Waller found himself facing a court-martial, convened hastily to put the matter to rest. Fortunately for the combative campaigner, another Marine had witnessed Smith’s exhortation, and the court found Waller not guilty. (14)

The Filipinos who attacked the garrison at Balangiga were not a “group” - they were an organized military unit, under the command of Eugenio Daza, who held a commission in the revolutionary army. Their plan of attack would do credit to any officer. Admiral Ramey did not offer a Marine battalion on the spur of the moment, but as part of a carefully coordinated battle plan. Waller’s force did not simply “burn villages and shoot Filipinos” at will, nor at random. The aggressive patrolling of his district was well planned, and the destruction was both limited and calculated for military effect. A map introduced as evidence at Waller’s court martial shows the patrol routes in southern Samar as a series of carefully plotted parabolas from the towns of Balangiga and Basey. The execution of eleven Filipinos at Basey on 19 and 20 January 1902 is a story in itself. There was far more involved than a bolo attack on an officer. Waller took full responsibility for the executions, although his battalion adjutant actually conducted the shootings. Nor was Waller's court martial a hastily convened surprise. An Army investigating officer visited Waller at Basey to gather evidence weeks before the trial began. Worst of all is the tone of jocularity in this piece, with its sneering references to "political correctness". Shooting prisoners is a far cry from telling dirty jokes, and an officer of Col. Bartlett's stature does the Corps no credit by equating the two.

The Truth

So there are many sources repeating an undocumented claim to the population figures of Samar and the number allegedly killed by the Americans. Are there any documented figures? Yes, from the Spanish government, in 1889:

La prov(incia). de Samar … ocupa una sup(erficia).de13,471 km2 con 185,386 habit(ante)s., distribuidos entre los pueblos de Balangiga, Basey, Bobon, Borongan, Calbayog, Colbiga, Capul, Catarman, Catbalogan (que es la ap. con 5,072.habits.), Catubig, Gandara, Guivan, Hernani, Jiabong, Lagranja, Lanang, Laouang, Lavezares, Mercedes, Mondragon, Oquendo, Oras, Palapag, Pambugan, Paranas, Paric, Pinabacdao, Quinapundan, Salcedo, San Julian, San Sebastian, Santa Rita, Sulat, Tarangan, Tubig, Villa Real, y Zumarraga. (15)

Not much knowledge of Spanish is needed to understand this paragraph. As of 1889, Samar had a population of 185,386 people. The provincial capital and largest town, Catbalogan, numbered 5,072. To assume that Samar's population almost doubled, to 300,000, in the space of ten years, is very unusual in a time and place of low life expectancy and high infant mortality. I have repeated the list of all of the towns of the province in order to point out a fact, and to raise a question. The fact, easily confirmed by any map, is that all of them are found on the coast of Samar, and none along the route of Waller’s march through the interior. The question: how many of them were destroyed by the Americans in the “Burning of Samar”? Every source, whether it’s the U.S. Army or the Revolutionary Worker, mentions one only. Balangiga was the only town razed by the Americans, and at the time the soldiers of the Eleventh Infantry Regiment fired the town and carted off the church bells, Balangiga was empty. To get fifty thousand dead on the island of Samar would have required the destruction of at least some of these towns, and the documented slaughter of all the inhabitants. Yet the record is silent.

The encyclopedia, in the same entry, tells us something with direct bearing on Waller’s march:

Los indigenas son de caracter docil; hay unos 10,000 remontados, es decir, en los montes y bosques del interior de la isla, donde hacen vida independiente y salvaje.
(The indigenous people are docile in nature; there are some 10,000 mountaineers, it is said, in the hills and woods of the interior of the island, where they live a free and uncivilized life.)

If Waller’s battalion did not pass through any of the populated towns of the coast except Basey and Balangiga; if Balangiga had already been destroyed by the Army before Waller’s men arrived; if Basey, the battalion headquarters, was clearly not destroyed; then these ten thousand mountain people are the only Filipinos Waller’s battalion could have encountered, and killed. How long did they have to do this? Lukban’s attack on Balangiga took place on September 28, 1901. General Smith’s “howling wilderness” order was given on October 23. The executions in Basey took place on 19 and 20 January 1902, by which time the March Across Samar had ended. In all, eighty-eight days. The Ninth Infantry, hurt by the losses at Balangiga, and the newly arrived Seventh Infantry, were in defensive positions most of this time. After their retaliatory burning of Balangiga, the Eleventh Infantry garrisoned the southern coast. Only Waller’s Marines were continuously active in the field, and they were detached from the Sixth Brigade and returned to duty in the fleet on 01 March.

Assuming that the Marines were busy killing people all day, every day, this means that they killed almost six hundred people a day in the 88 consecutive days of the campaign. This is incredible for a reinforced company of barely 300 Marines, many already weak from hunger and tropical sickness. It also assumes the dubious, and undocumented, figure of fifty thousand dead. Samar, then as now, is the poorest and most rural of the Philippine provinces. The Marines were dealing with no large population centers, but with tiny villages of subsistence farmers scattered throughout the rugged hills. The inhabitants knew the Marines were coming long before they arrived, and had plenty of time for flight. Waller’s Marines, many so weak they could barely stand, couldn’t have rounded up six hundred people a day, let alone killed that many. There is no serious reason to doubt Waller’s own figure of 39 Filipinos (and 13 carabao) killed in the entire march. Adding the eleven men shot in Basey makes an even fifty Filipinos killed by the Marine battalion. This is all there is to the much-vaunted “campaign of blood”, the “burning of Samar”.

There are many sources repeating an undocumented claim to the population figures of Samar and the number allegedly killed by the Americans. Are there any documented figures? The Spanish government, in an 1889 survey of its holdings, gives the population of Samar as 185,386, and lists thirty-seven “pueblos” or incorporated towns. The largest is the provincial capital, Catbalogan, with a population of 5,072 (15). A fact, easily confirmed by any map, is that all of them are found on the coast of Samar, and none along the route of Waller’s march through the interior. How many of them were destroyed by the Americans in the “Burning of Samar”? Every source mentions one only. Balangiga was the only town razed by the Americans, and at the time the soldiers of the Eleventh Infantry Regiment fired the town and carted off the church bells, Balangiga was empty. To get fifty thousand dead on the island of Samar would have required the destruction of at least some of these towns, and the documented slaughter of all the inhabitants. Yet the record is silent. In fact, a study by Dr. Bruce Gordon finds that the population of Samar increased an average of 2.05% annually between 1896 and 1939 (16). The first actual census of Samar's inabitants by the United States, in 1918, shows a population of 379,575 people - more than twice the total of the last Spanish census. Gordon concludes:

My objective was to determine if deaths were in the hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands. Census data do not support the claim of tens of thousands of deaths in Samar. I did not find any other evidence of starvation or any massacres approaching My Lai or No Gun Ri. … I conclude that mass deaths did not occur.

If Waller’s battalion did not pass through any of the populated towns of the coast except Basey and Balangiga, how could they have encountered fifty thousand people? How long did they have to find and kill them? Daza's attack on Balangiga took place on September 28, 1901. General Smith’s “howling wilderness” order was given on October 23. The executions in Basey for which Waller was tried took place on 19 and 20 January 1902, by which time the campaign in Samar had ended. In all, eighty-eight days.

Assuming the figure of fifty thousand dead means that that the Marines killed almost six hundred people a day. Waller’s 300 Marines, many so weak from hunger and tropical disease that they could barely stand, couldn’t have rounded up six hundred people a day, let alone killed that many. There is no serious reason to doubt Waller’s own figure of 39 Filipinos (and 13 carabao) killed in the entire march. Adding the eleven men shot in Basey makes an even fifty Filipinos killed by the Marine battalion. This is all there is to the much-vaunted “campaign of blood”, the “burning of Samar”.

Anyone who cites American atrocities should first answer this question. How do we know that these things happened? How did the world learn of the “kill and burn” order, or the My Lai massacre? The revelations came from the courts martial of the officers who commanded. Atrocities always occur in warfare, and only the willfully blind would deny it. In the U.S. armed forces these incidents have always been treated as the individual criminal acts they are. We have never had an official policy of torture or genocide. Americans maintain a rule of law that is never allowed to break down, and which no one is allowed to circumvent.

There is no documented account of the torture of Filipinos by U.S. Marines, with the "water cure" or by any other method. The accusations are simply innuendo, and no evidence of any kind has been offered. It is certain that several Army officers used water torture (at least three publicly admitted it), so it is automatically assumed by the press, and by scholars, that the Marines did likewise. I cannot stress this enough - there is no documented incident of torture by Waller's Marines. There is simply one hundred year's worth of slander.

It is not my intention to defend the American annexation of the Philippines, nor the administration that carried it out. Imperialism is an historical fact, and it reflected the will of the American people, if only by default. The elections of 1902 and 1904 were referendums on the question, and in both cases the electorate returned the imperialists to office. Whether the imperialists won because of their imperial program or in spite of it, there could be no doubt what they would do. I am simply defending the character of one of the finest officers in the history of the United States Marine Corps. For a century Waller has been convicted, without trial, of atrocities never committed. What the anti-imperialists could not prove in court, they have simply announced as proven, and their charges have been taken for fact. Waller didn't kill fifty thousand people. He killed fifty, and thirty-nine of those were universally agreed to be in the line of duty. He would stand trial for the killing of the other eleven, and he would be acquitted. His position as a sub-district commander was sufficiently vague that the court martial accepted his explanation that he was within his lawful authority.

But that's a whole different story ...



(1) An article in Leatherneck magazine, January 2002, specifies that they were Shafi'i Muslims, and also repeats the old stories about the mutilation of corpses. Exhibits at the Waller court martial specifically refute both of these claims.
(2) Finley Peter Dunne, writing as "Mr. Dooley" in the Chicago Tribune.
(3) The Waller court martial transcript is kept at the National Archives and Records Administration annex in College Park, Maryland, in Record Group 153, Entry 15. Waller's record is GCM 30313, Box 3367.
(4) The Balangiga Incident and Its Aftermath, Philippine Daily Inquirer, Sept. 28, 2001.
(5) The Balangiga Massacre: Getting Even, by Victor Nebrida for the Philippine History Group of Los Angeles, California, 1997
(6) Howard Zinn, The Massacres of History, Progressive, August 1998
(7) Hobart Spalding, U.S. Imperialism and 1898, Monthly Review, December 1998
(8) Charles Glass, The First Lies Club: How the Imperial Eagle Got Its Wings, Harper's Magazine, January 2003
(9) Galang, Bagbakan
(10) Anti-Imperialism in the United States, 1898-1935, edited by Jim Zwick. Copyright © 1995-2003 Jim Zwick. Available at http://www.boondocksnet.com/
(11) Dr. Rolando Borrinaga, The Human Cost of Wars in Leyte and Samar, Paper presented at the Second Regional Conference on Leyte-Samar History, Tacloban City, December 16, 1999
(12) “Book TV” on the C-SPAN2 network, February 8, 2004
(13) Both reviews are found at http://www.amazon.com/
(14) Lt. Col. Merrill L. Bartlett, USMC (Ret), Politically Incorrect but Militarily Correct, Naval History, February 2004
(15) Diccionario Enciclopedico del Imperio Espanico, (Encyclopedic Dictionary of the Spanish Empire), dated 1889. Facsimile copy published in London, 1928, in the Navy Department library, Washington, DC
(16) Dr. Gordon’s study is available on the Internet at http://deanjorgebocobo.blogspot.com/2003_10_07_DJB.html