Pacification of Samar

The Pacification of Samar was a counterinsurgency operation initiated by General Adna Chaffee during the Philippine-American War, following the Balangiga massacre. General hostilities had largely ceased following the capture of Emilio Aguinaldo, president of the insurgent Philippine Republic, and his publication of a manifesto on April 10, 1901 acknowledging and accepting U.S. sovereignty throughout the Philippines.

General Vicente Lukban had been the commander, under Aguinaldo, of a guerilla force on the island of Samar and had, when offered the opportunity to surrender, replied that he intended to fight on to the end. In September, in an action that became known as the Balangiga massacre, Lukban's forces assisted by townspeople in a surprise uprising inflicted 54 killed and 18 wounded on a U.S. Army company garrisoning that town. Following this, General Jacob H. Smith was tasked with the pacification of Samar.

During the pacification, Smith ordered an indiscriminate retaliation which involved stopping the flow of food and causing extensive destruction in order to make the people of Samar abandon their support for the rebels out of fear and malnutrition and turn to the Americans instead. He also infamously ordered to "kill everyone over the age of ten [and make the island] a howling wilderness." Despite Smith's subordinate Littleton Waller partly revoked his order, between 2,000 and 2,500 civilians died; some historians put the number as high as 5,000 victims. Some sources place the death toll as high as 50,000, but these are now believed to have resulted from typographical errors and misreading of documents. Smith was court-martialed for his conduct of operations on Samar. Waller was also later tried for ordering or allowing the execution of a dozen Filipino porters.