US vets back Duterte’s demand for return of Balangiga bells

President Rodrigo Duterte's demand for United States to return the Balangiga bells has gained the support of a huge group of American war veterans.

According to a report on "24 Oras,"  former US Air Force officer Spike Nasmyth wrote US Senator John McCain to ask him to support the return of the bells that American soldiers seized as war booty from Church of San Lorenzo in Balangiga, Eastern Samar after over a century.

"Our local VFW Post 2485, one of the largest in the VFW submitted a Resolution in support of returning the bells to the Church of San Lorenzo in Balangiga," wrote Nasmyth.

"It is the honorable and right thing to do...as one POW to another, to help make it right. It is time for the bells to go home," he added.

McCain, who was recently diagnosed with brain cancer, was a onetime prisoner of war.

Nasmyth also said the bells should never have been taken in the first place.

"Bells are not war booty, they belong in a Church to call the faithful to worship," he said.

During his second SONA in July, Duterte said the Balangiga bells represented the heroism of Filipinos who resisted the Americans.

"The church bells of Balangiga were seized by the Americans as spoils of war," the president said.

Two of the three Balangiga bells are displayed at F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Cheyenne, Wyoming.

They are part of a memorial to 46 US troops killed by Filipino insurgents in 1901. —Anna Felicia Bajo/NB, GMA News