Unveiling the Untold: Congo’s Contribution to the First Atomic Bomb – A Tale from My Father and Oppenheimer
PAPA, MY FATHER, had told me a story about uranium a long time ago, which was about the first atomic bomb ever operated. The one that fell on Hiroshima; one of those bombs that you saw being made in the dramatic movie ‘Oppenheimer’ about this heat. Papa, you see, was born in Belgian Congo.
At the beginning of this heat, I was invited to a blockbuster screening. The film’s director, Christopher Nolan, was also there. In a recurring scene, which symbolizes the scientists’ efforts to progress, Oppenheimer fills an empty glass jar with marbles – first one at a time, then a handful. Stones represent the quantity of uranium, which was successfully mined and refined to provide power to the nuclear reaction. The outcome of the Second World War and the future of humanity depend on who can make that monster first – a rogue nation or a friendly nation. As we get closer to completing the bomb, more and more marbles go into the jar. But there is no mention in the movie of where the two-thirds of the uranium came from: a 24-story deep mine, now in Katanga, Congo, which is a mineral-rich region in the southeast.
As the marbles continued to fill the jar on screen, I kept watching to see what was missing: black miners were hauling mud and stones to extract the radioactive ore from the hands of radio-durable uranium with their black hands.
Dad was born in a small missionary post in Mission Enyenge in Belgium in 1946. He told us how the Belgians taught the Congolese people to worship God; how Belgians addressed Congolese adults in informal French rather than formal vous; how Belgians said that eating with their hands, like Dad, was uncivilized. Dad learned in school that the Congolese were backward and auxiliary to modern life. I did the same. Yet, Dad said that the Congolese were undoubtedly the most essential components of modern history, inevitable in the most productive creation.
Colonial Brutality: King Leopold II’s Reign in the Congo Free State
In 1885, when King Leopold II of Belgium first claimed ownership of this vast land situated at the center of Africa on the deepest river in the world, he called it the Congo Free State. Sure, life for nearly 10 to 20 million inhabitants meant violence and escaping from a terrorist state run by the king. Throughout the region, which had transformed into a series of cotton and rubber plantations, the king’s soldiers severed the arms of the Congolese who did not meet the rubber-cutting quota. The king’s policies spread famine and disease. Millions couldn’t make it.
Transition from Colonial Rule: From Congo Free State to Belgian Congo
In 1908, when the Belgian government took the territory from the king, the “Congo Free State” became “Belgian Congo.” Susan Williams, a writer and historian of spies in Congo, writes that at that time, private enterprise took over as the exploiters of Congo’s natural resources in place of the king. Violence persisted. Furthermore, while Belgian officials began formally educating children through Christian missionaries, they feared that an educated Congolese colony would destabilize. For Dad’s father’s sake, they would give a chance to the outcasts of the colony – those who would become priests – an opportunity that even some of Dad’s older siblings would not have had.
The colonial system turned workers into slaves and turned people into serfs on the frontier. An American officer traveling through Belgian Congo described an image he saw on his first day: a Congolese man in torn shorts sat on his knees on the ground, a Belgian officer was standing on top of him with a whip, a leather whip with metal studs. “The whip cracked … after each whip, the scream of pain was heard … from the neck to the waist, the skin was dark and there was a pile of blood, and the sweat was shining.” The American was told by the Belgian, “Welcome to Congo.”
The largest company in Belgian Congo was the mining company Union Minière du Haut Katanga. The colonial government gave it control over an area of about 8,000 square miles, more than half the size of Belgium. There was a mine there, Shinkolobwe, rich in uranium. In fact, it was filled with uranium that the Congolese had already mined and piled up on the surface of the earth. Initially, uranium was just a byproduct of more valuable radium mining, which Nobel laureate Marie Curie helped determine could treat cancer. In 1938, using uranium, physicists Leó Szilárd and Otto Frisch calculated which defined nuclear fission. Scientists felt that if enough nuclei were split, a massive amount of energy could be released. Uranium was now prestigious.”
Einstein’s Warning and the Race for Uranium: The Congo’s Role in WWII
In 1939, just before the start of World War II, Albert Einstein wrote a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt with a cautious warning: “Elemental uranium might be transmuted into a new and important source of energy in the immediate future… It can be imagined… that extremely powerful bombs of a new type may thus be constructed.” Einstein’s letter mentioned four known sources of uranium: the United States, which possessed “very poor ores of uranium in moderate quantities”; Canada and Eastern Czechoslovakia, where “some good ores are found”; and the Congo, “the most important source of uranium.” According to Jean Béli, a Congolese nuclear physicist at MIT, about 1 kilogram of refined uranium could be obtained from 100 kilograms of Congolese uranium ore. Other places would require only 2 or 3 grams of refined uranium for the same amount of ore.
Mining companies typically constructed compounds resembling prison camps for workers and their families. In the beginning, each family received about 43 square feet of space – roughly the size of a small garage – and weekly rationed meals. During work, miners extracted uranium ore by hand. One individual described a piece of Shinkolobwe uranium ore as “as big as a pig,” being “black and golden, and it looked as if it was covered with green mucus or kai.” He called it a “shiny stone.”
Edgar Sengier, the director of Union Minière du Haut-Katanga, a yellow Belgian with a sharp-cut mustache, was uncertain about the prediction of Hitler’s invasion of Poland in September 1939 after witnessing Germany’s aggression in Belgium during World War I. He wondered whether Belgium, or even Africa, would be next. In October, he fled Belgium for New York and relocated the company’s operations there. However, before he could establish the shop, a British chemist and Nobel laureate, Frederick Joliot-Curie, son-in-law of Marie Curie, informed Sengier that uranium might be needed for the war effort in the Congo. In the next autumn season, Sengier ordered it to be sent to New York.
So, the Congolese workers washed and loaded the ore. It was sent by train to Port Francqui (now Ilebo), then by ship up the Kasai and Congo rivers to the capital, Leopoldville (now Kinshasa). At Matadi’s harbor, uranium began its journey across the Atlantic Ocean, making its way to a depot on Stanten Island, despite the presence of German U-boats. Sengier stored over 2.6 million pounds of ore in the United States. Around 6.6 million pounds remained in Shinkolobwe.
Unrest and Struggle: Congolese Miners’ Fight for Rights During WWII
In May 1940, Hitler invaded France and Belgium. The Belgian government fled to London, and a collaborationist regime was established in Belgium under the Third Reich. However, the Governor-General of Belgian Congo announced that the colony would support the Allied nations. He prepared soldiers, offered Congo’s labor force, and established production quotas to supply the necessary war materials to the Allied nations. Consequently, during the war, many Congolese returned to the jungles where their parents and grandparents had been maimed by hands or paws. This time, hundreds of thousands of rubber-like minerals were cut out in 24-hour shifts.
In Sengier’s mining towns, as in other places, Congolese were unable to move freely without permits. They had to reach home by 9 p.m. to avoid dire consequences. Wages were dismal. By 1941, though “original inhabitants” were excluded from unions, many black miners in Sengier’s mines began to organize for higher wages and better working conditions.
December 7, 1941, Pearl Harbor Day, was a significant day not just during the war, but also in the lives of Congo’s miners. On that day, black workers in Sengier’s mines organized a large-scale strike for better mining conditions in Katanga. In Elizabethville, 500 workers refused to start their shifts. Soon, new off-duty miners joined them, gathering in front of management offices demanding wage increases. A compromise was achieved for negotiations on a pay raise the next day.
The next morning, mine workers came to the local football stadium to negotiate with Sengier’s company and the colonial governor of Katanga. According to conflicting reports, between 800 and 2,000 strikers participated. The company offered oral settlements to increase wages. An historian described this as the first open expression of dissent in Congo’s social history. However, when a Congolese worker named Léonard Mpoyi demanded written confirmation of wage increases, the colonial governor sent the crowd home.
“I refuse,” Mpoyi said. “You must give us some proof that the company agrees to raise our wages.”
Governor Amour Maron responded, “I have already requested that you visit the office for an inquiry.” Then he pulled out a gun from his pocket and shot Mapoyi point-blank. The soldiers fired shots “from all directions.” The mine workers emerged from the Khadan Majdur Stadium. Approximately 70 people were killed, and nearly 100 were injured.
The next morning, the company’s loudspeaker called everyone back to work.
About a year after Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt appointed General Leslie Groves as the head of the Manhattan Project. On his first day, in September 1942, Groves and his deputy, Colonel Kenneth Nichols, discussed how to obtain the necessary uranium for the massive project. Nichols informed Groves about Señor Sengir and his uranium. The next morning, Nichols met Sengir in his New York office and by the end of the meeting, they struck a deal on a yellow legal pad. Nichols announced, “I want to start bringing uranium from tomorrow.” In less than a month, Groves put J. Robert Oppenheimer to work on building the bomb.
In the following years, Congo became a hub for American spies – “Trade Attaché,” “Texaco Employee,” “Silk Buyer,” and “Living Gorilla Collector” – all to safeguard the flow of uranium. General Groves strongly advocated that America gain full control over Shinkolobwe and recommended to President Roosevelt that the mine be reopened. An engineering battalion was sent to Congo to initiate new mining operations. The mine’s location was wiped off maps. Spies were instructed to eliminate the term “uranium” from their conversations; instead, advisors suggested using terms like “diamonds.” The company’s miners began mining for other essential minerals too, sweating during the day and toiling with massive furnaces at night, amid the noise of trains or planes arriving from America. Due to the mining strike, labor wages had increased by 30 to 50 percent. However, some people were forcibly summoned for mining. Between 1938 and 1944, the company’s plants saw almost double the number of deadly accidents. To escape rubber quotas, people fled from rural areas to cities like Elisabethville, where the African population went from 26,000 in 1940 to 65,000 in 1945.
The American government was also concerned about Nazi spies. An American spy was tasked with determining if Nazi Shinkolobwe was involved in uranium trafficking. The Nazis intercepted one of Señor Sengir’s shipments and sank it.
Upon their arrival in the US, the shiny rocks were processed in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and then sent to Los Alamos, New Mexico, to Oppenheimer. It took almost three years for Oppenheimer and his team to develop the bomb. Although the Germans surrendered in May 1945 (and it became clear they were not close to building a nuclear bomb), the war was ongoing in the Pacific. Finally, in August 1945, America dropped two bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, with the first bomb – as Papa said – filled with Congolese uranium.
Jean Bele, Congo’s nuclear physicist, told me that radioactive isotopes still exist in Shinkolobwe’s soil. He said, “Radioactive isotopes enter solid water, crops, trees, soil, animals, and reach humans.” We don’t know the limit of radiation. We know that cancer mortality rates have increased in Oak Ridge. And near St. Louis, Missouri, where the remains of Congo’s ore were dumped, pollution poses a risk to workers for the next 1,000 years.
After the screening of Oppenheimer, like a fan, I went up to Nolan in the lobby. I could ask him about isotopes, why he chose them, and how he solved a creative problem. He humbly nodded his head in agreement: “I needed a way to demonstrate how long it would take to refine all that ore.” Then he added, “The number of isotopes was indeed mathematically accurate to how much they needed.”
Undoubtedly, without Congo, it would have been impossible. In the race to make the bomb, both sides wanted Congo’s ore. According to Colonel Nichols, the Shinkolobwe mine was a “peculiar event in nature.” “Nothing like it had ever been encountered.” And undoubtedly, that meant that without Congo’s black workers – in terror and subjugation, digging war minerals round the clock – the result would have been quite different, the most effective project in human history.
In 1946, Señor became the first non-American to receive the Meritorious Service Medal for “extraordinary achievement or courage in a non-combatant activity,” stamping the seal of approval on Allied victory. In one image from the ceremony, you can see something else too: a man with something to hide. During the war, intelligence revealed that Señor’s company had also sold the Nazis nearly 1.5 million pounds of Congolese uranium. In 1948, a radiochemical mineral was named in Señor’s honor: Sengeirite.”
At that very moment, the people of Congo, from whom I come, were ready to dismantle the oppressive systems that aimed to weaken their power; eventually, they achieved their independence in 1960. Papa was only 13 years old then, and although it took him several years to learn about uranium miners, he always knew that the people of Congo held significance in history.
