On May 2, 1010, Co-clerk Joy Weaver was one of several members of meetings in New York Yearly Meeting who participated in an International Day of Action in New York City organized to coincide with the opening of the pentennial Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), held under the auspices of the UN, May 3-28. Interviewed about her participation by a reporter from a Japanese newspaper, Joy informed him that her lifelong involvement in nuclear disarmament activities was precipitated by the Long Island visit of two of the “Hiroshima maidens,” the two dozen young Japanese women who were were severely disfigured by the Hiroshima bomb and came to the U.S. for reconstructive surgery. Joy met them – just a few years older than herself – when an American escort brought them into the Garden City shop where she was working.
For the May 2 event, some 10,000 people filled Times Square for a rally with speeches and music, followed by a march across town to the UN, where an International Peace and Music Festival took place in Dag Hammarskjold Plaza. The event was preceded on April 30-May 1 by an International Conference for a Nuclear-free, Peaceful, Just and Sustainable World at Riverside Church keynoted by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and attended by 800 people from 30 nations.
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