ALS, signed twice, “Yoko Ono,” eight pages, 8 x 10, circa 1987. Long letter to Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, signed at the head and at the conclusion. In part: "I have been thinking very seriously about the events of the last weeks and I am writing to you in hopes that you can exert some influence on a situation I find very disturbing…I keep thinking of my dear dear late husband and his wish—his mania—that mankind could somehow be jolted into the realization that peace is our greatest and richest heritage—the one heirloom which we must pass onto our children or be doomed. Have we forgotten our children? Lately it seems we have. Child abuse, aids, children living in midtown hotels—these are headlines in our life that shock or revolt but we adults we are safely ensconced in our world and the suffering of others is frequently nothing more than cocktail part chatter. But what about our children?
I will never forget as I was growing up in Japan just before the war we thought would never happen and my family and I were forced to pick up stakes and begin a new life as immigrants here in NY (Parkchester as a matter of fact where my father taught violin to the rich and bored children of stockbrokers and merchants) there was a brief period of fame for a deeply religious Buddhist monk whom every one called the Little Monk because even for the Japanese he was small (4´ 2″). Though I was quite young at the time I can see still his piercing brown eyes as he spoke in the Garden of the Lively Lily Pads. He seemed to burn with an interior fire and yet he was not at all forbidding but radiated humor and contentment. Yet his message was neither funny nor smug. He warned us then that we were on our way to horrible cataclysm and unless we could bury our grudges, our grudges would bury us. Well, you know how right he was and I heard later that he died tragically ministering to radiation victims in Hiroshima. They say he died of a broken heart. And so he might have.
But we continue to nurture our grudges. You know, my son Sean, is now 12 years old and he, Sean, is 1/2 Irish. Half Irish and 1/2 Japanese. His father and I were of very different racial and religious backgrounds and sometimes our points of view did less than absolutely mesh. It always seemed to me that John had a wildly sentimental nature, and imaginative genius for wishful thinking and braggadocio that I attributed to his sad and difficult upbringing in Liverpool. As you know, he was abandoned by his father (who was an alcoholic) when he was 3 and brought up by a scholarly but somewhat inhibited aunt who tried in vain to inculcate in John a love of Latin and medieval English philosophy—for instance the somewhat naive but fascinating theories of Ethelred the Youngest who believed all life to be a battle between imagination and reality—imagination responsible for our moments of euphoria and love and reality inducing our moments of pain, birth, death and growth. John denied all this and felt that only imagination and creativity spurred human growth, that being bogged down in reality stunted mankind. He always felt that we should try to find the mystery in reality and it took a while by John's aunt finally saw the method in his madness.
But John's preoccupations went with him inside the small jar upon the end table where all that was worldly of him remains. The small jar carved with the serpent of existence and the cicada of eternal melodies who rises from its winter grave to fill the air with melodies all the more wonderful for having been stilled for so long.
But my son's songs which are the point of this letter and the songs of so many Irish boys like him in Northern Ireland, why I ask myself do the Irish continue to fight these horrendous medieval battles over Catholicism and Protestantism? As a woman raised in neither culture I confess that I find the differences between the 2 cults mystifying. Both believe in the Cristus—in turning the other cheek—in blessing one's enemies yet both seem to find that Christ's real message was that the world wasn't big enough for both of them and like some old time Western—one sect or the other much bite the dust. How do I explain this to Sean? The violence in N. Ireland fills one with horror. I know that an Irish politician like yourself works tirelessly for peace and reconciliation there. If there is anything I can do won't you let me know? I am well aware that my reputation for eccentricity sometimes makes my efforts counter productive. Ironically someone firmly ensconced within the system has the greatest power and the least inclination to change things. Please let me know what if anything I can do. I cannot believe that my own son must grow up and 'take sides' or deny his own ethnicity." In fine condition. Senator Moynihan's gracious response can be found in the book entitled Daniel Patrick Moynihan: A Portrait in Letters of an American Visionary, in which he asks to speak with Sean about the situation in Ireland during an upcoming trip to New York.
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