Chapter 15
After cigarettes and sandwiches, the judge met privately with the lawyers. Truitt said he had no other witnesses and felt as though he had proven his case sufficiently. Oswalt agreed. Wilbanks couldn’t deny it either and complimented the DA on how well his evidence had been presented. As for the defense, there was still doubt as to whether Pete Banning would take the stand. One day he wanted to testify and plead his case to the jury. The next day he would barely speak to his own lawyer. Wilbanks confided that he now believed Pete was mentally unbalanced, but there would be no insanity plea. Pete was still staunchly opposed to it, and the filing deadline had long since passed.
“Who’s your first witness?” Judge Oswalt asked.
“Major Rusconi, U.S. Army.”
“And the gist of his testimony?”
“I want to establish that my client, while on active duty and fighting the Japanese in the Philippines, was taken captive and presumed dead. This was the message sent to his family in May of 1942.”
“I don’t see the relevance to this crime, John,” Truitt said.
“And I’m not surprised to hear that. I will attempt to lay the foundation for my client’s testimony, in the event he takes the stand.”
“I’m not so sure either, John,” Judge Oswalt said skeptically. “You’ll prove he was dead or missing or both, and this was what the family believed, and therefore the minister, in the course of doing his duties, somehow stepped out of line, thus giving the defendant an excuse. Is this what you’re thinking?”
Truitt was shaking his head in disapproval.
Wilbanks said, “Judge, I don’t have anything else, maybe other than the defendant himself. You must allow me to mount a defense, shaky as it sounds.”
“Put him on. Miles, make your objection. I’ll let him go for a few minutes and see where he takes us, but I am skeptical.”
“Thanks, Judge,” Wilbanks said.
When the jurors were seated after a leisurely lunch break, Judge Oswalt informed them that the State had rested and the defense was waiving its right to make an opening statement. Major Anthony Rusconi was called to the stand, and he marched right in, garbed in full military regalia. He was from New Orleans, with that thick, unmistakable accent and easy smile. He was a career officer who had served in the Pacific.
After a few preliminaries, Miles Truitt rose and politely said, “Your Honor, with all due respect to the witness, his testimony is and will continue to be of no relevance to the facts and issues involved in this case. Therefore, I would like to enter a continuing objection to his testimony.”
“So noted. Continue, Mr. Wilbanks.”
Before the war, Rusconi was stationed in Manila and worked in the headquarters of General Douglas MacArthur, the commander of the U.S. forces in the Philippines. The day after Pearl Harbor, the Japanese bombed the American air bases in the Philippines and the war was on.
At that time, Lieutenant Pete Banning was an officer in the Twenty-Sixth Cavalry and stationed at Fort Stotsenburg near Clark Field, sixty miles north of Manila.
The Japanese quickly destroyed the American air and naval forces and invaded with fifty thousand battle-hardened and well-supplied troops. The Americans and their allies, the Filipino Scouts and the regular Philippine Army, mounted a heroic defense, but as the Japanese reinforced and tightened their noose around the islands, food, medicine, fuel, and ammunition disappeared. With no air support for protection and no navy to provide supplies and possible escape, the Americans were forced to retreat to the Bataan Peninsula, a forbidding and jungle-infested stretch of terrain jutting into the South China Sea.
Rusconi was quite the storyteller and seemed to enjoy the opportunity to talk about the war. Miles Truitt shook his head and tried to make eye contact with Judge Oswalt, who avoided him. The jurors were spellbound. The spectators were riveted and virtually motionless.
The siege lasted four months, and when the Americans were forced to surrender to a vastly superior force, it was the biggest defeat in the history of the U.S. Army. But the men had no choice. They were starving, sick, emaciated, and dying so fast burials were not possible. Malaria, dengue fever, dysentery, scurvy, and beriberi were rampant, along with tropical diseases the American doctors had never heard of. And things were about to get worse.
Rusconi himself surrendered in Manila in February of 1942. General MacArthur left in March and set up his command in Australia. Rusconi and his staff were thrown in a prison camp near Manila, but were allowed to maintain many of the records the Japanese did not deem important. They were reasonably well treated but always hungry. Things were to be far different on Bataan.
According to the scant records Rusconi was able to keep and piece together, Lieutenant Banning surrendered with his unit on April 10, 1942, on the southern tip of the Bataan Peninsula. He was one of approximately seventy thousand prisoners of war who were forced to march for days with no food and water. Thousands collapsed and died in the blistering sun and their bodies were simply tossed in roadside ditches.
Among the captured were hundreds of officers, and, as awful as the conditions were, some semblance of command was attempted. Word spread through the march that the names of those who died were to be remembered and later recorded so the families could be notified. Under the dire circumstances, it was a task that proved to be difficult. Rusconi digressed and explained to the jury that as of today, January 7, 1947, the U.S. Army was still in the grim business of finding and attempting to identify dead soldiers in the Philippines.
Miles Truitt stood, raised both hands, and said, “Your Honor, please, this is a murder trial. This story is tragic and compelling, but it has nothing to do with our business here.”
Judge Oswalt was obviously struggling. The testimony was clearly irrelevant. He looked at John Wilbanks and said, “Where are you going, Counselor?”
Wilbanks managed to give the impression that he knew exactly what he was doing. He said, “Please, Your Honor, bear with me for a little longer. I think I can tie things together.”
The judge looked skeptical but said to Rusconi, “Continue.”
Several days into the march, Lieutenant Banning was injured and left behind. No effort was made to assist him because, as the captives had quickly learned, such an effort drew a quick bayonet from a Japanese guard. Later, during a break, some of the men from his unit listened as the Japanese soldiers finished off the stragglers. There was no doubt Lieutenant Banning had been shot by the Japanese guards.
Pete was listening because it was impossible not to, but he sat stone-faced and stared at the floor as if he heard nothing. Not once did he react or look at the witness.
Rusconi testified that at least ten thousand U.S. and Philippine soldiers died during the march. They died from starvation, dehydration, exhaustion, sunstroke, and executions by bullets, beatings, bayonetings, and beheadings. Those who survived were packed into wretched death camps where survival was even more challenging than it had been on the death march. The officers attempted to organize various ways to record the names of the dead, and during the late spring and early summer of 1942 lists of casualties began to filter into Rusconi’s office in Manila. On May 19 the family of Pete Banning was officially notified that he had been captured, was missing, and was presumed dead. From that point, there was no word from the captain until the liberation of the Philippines, when he emerged from the jungle with a gang of commandos. For over two years, he had led his men in a brazen, heroic, and near-suicidal campaign of terror against the Japanese army. For his bravery and leadership, he was awarded the Purple Heart, the Silver Star, the Bronze Star, and the Distinguished Service Cross for heroism in combat.