Ono’s lost family

Yoko Ono gave up a lot for John Lennon, said Chrissy Iley in The Daily Telegraph (U.K.). Before she fell in with Lennon, she was an established artist; afterward, she became part of a duo that eclipsed them both. “In a way, John and I ruined our careers by getting together,” she says. Beatles fans were horrified by the union, as was her aristocratic family back in Tokyo. “[My mother] was hurt when she heard I had gone off with a working-class guy from Liverpool. The family put out a press release saying, ‘We are not proud of Yoko Ono.’” Worse, her then husband, Tony Cox, disappeared with their 7-year-old daughter, Kyoko, fearing he would lose custody of the girl to Ono and Lennon. By the time Ono saw her daughter again, Kyoko was 31. “It was hard. I remembered her as a little girl and I kept buying her small cashmere sweaters. They piled up in my dressing room until someone said to me, ‘Do you realize she’s now 26, why are you keeping these things?’” she says. “[Kyoko] had so much love for her father, and he had said very clearly that if she searched me out she would never see him again.”

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