In the wake of the terrorist attacks on the United States, Rolling Stone Magazine asked several prominent people in the music industry their feelings in a special edition of the magazine titled "9.11.01"

The following is Yoko's essay written for that issue of Rolling Stone.

"I definitely went back to my childhood in Tokyo during World War II. I remembered that every night there would be a siren, and that meant that the B-52s were overhead.  We had to go to the shelters.  Then you heard the bombs coming down. They had a very special sound - this 'boom, boom' - and you knew that they were coming closer to where we were.  And you would think that it was going to come down on you.  But then it stopped, you came out of the shelter and realized that you would live for another day.

"I think we're going to create a new reality together. We are one mind, one body. And we have received an incredible shock to our body.  This is a time for us to realize that we should not try, through anger or fear, to cut off another arm.  That body has to live and survive.  It's true what Mahatma Gandhi said: 'An eye for an eye only leaves the whole world blind.'

"John would have been extremely angry.  But he was not dumb. He was a wise guy. He knew we had to work not from our emotions but from our wisdom.  In the 1960s, when the political radicals were saying, 'Kill the pigs' - meaning the police - we said, 'Hug the pigs. Kiss a cop.' And people thought we were crazy.  People who were on our side thought we were crazy. But this is a time of healing.  And it's a time when American citizens should try to know and understand the language and the beliefs of Muslims.  Instead of hating them, we should embrace them, and listen to what they have to say. We have to find out what they can tell us about this, and about their faith.

"We might have a war, but it's not the end of the world.  We can make it not be the end of the world. I witnessed Hiroshima, and being in Tokyo when Tokyo was burning.  And we survived.  We are a very resilient people, the human race.  My experience was painful, but it made me stronger.  I did my best with what I had - the feeling that I had just been through something terrible, but I had survived.

"My feeling is that there are some people who are threatened by the idea of peace, because  they want to go to war. But we have to have the wisdom not to take these polls too seriously.  The polls show more than 80% of the people want to go to war. Nobody asked me. No poll researcher came to me to ask those questions. None of my friends were ever asked either. What kind of poll is that?

"Quite often as we pray for peace, we imagine war.  Imagining and prayer have to go together.  Imagine all the people living life in peace while you pray."