The Battle of Bud Bagsak

1913 US troops under General John ‘Black Jack’ Pershing ended (temporarily, for it continues to this day) the Moro people’s struggle for self-determination in the Philippines.

This was done by exterminating 2,000, including 196 women and 340 children, (one source has 6,000 to 10,000 men, women and children*) in an assault on the same crater in which an entire community had been similarly liquidated on March 8, 1906, an act of bastardry roundly condemned by anti-imperialist Mark Twain.

The Moro defenders of Bud Bagsak pitched spears and barongs at the overwhelming firepower of the US military. Pershing “stood so close to the trench, directing operations, that his life was endangered by flying barongs and spears which were being continually hurled from the Moro stronghold.”