By Jeff Hampton
He shares the same name as New Zealand’s most famous movie director, but Christchurch’s Peter Jackson has a different story-telling talent.
At the age of 92, the old soldier with failing eyesight is launching his first book, about being held prisoner by the Japanese.
He has just had his first book published, a story about his life as a prisoner of the Japanese on the notorious Burma Railway in World War II.
“I enjoyed writing it, I’ve got a whole case of short stories sitting at home... they'll never get published but I enjoyed writing them,” he says.
Mr Jackson was captured at Singapore and sent up to the railway, immortalised in the movie Bridge Over the River Kwai, but which also cost an estimated 16,000 Allied lives.
The old soldier is one of the few to escape. He spent eight months on the run and survived being recaptured in a cave by the Japanese.
“I was expecting any minute to be shot, and after a minute or two I felt my hands being tied behind my back and that's how we got captured,” he says.
That was one part of the story that appealed to Christchurch publisher Jenny Haworth.
“Most of those who escaped from the Japanese and were recaptured were virtually shot on the spot so it's a rather unusual story,” she says.
Mr Jackson wrote it in long-hand, and it turned out differently to the usual chronicles of despair and cruelty.
“The average book I’ve read about the Japanese war is blood and guts, people getting heads chopped off, being murdered and god knows what…but in my case it's a different story altogether,” he says.
He remembers the humanity of some of his captors and does not hold bitterness - a different type of author altogether.
3 News