Belgium helped build the A-Bomb used on Hiroshima

[Maciamo]

I have just learnt today that the uranium of the atomic bomb dropped by the Americans on Hiroshima was provided by Belgium. It came from the colony of Belgian Congo.

[sabro]

That would have made the refining process easier. The African ore is much better.

I thought it all came from the Oljato mine in Utah and the Morrison mines in Colorado. The better ore from the Congo and Zaire was used after the war ended. I don't have a source though, this is from memory. Where did your information come from.

[taeter_tot]

i wonder if there are de-classified documents on the manhattan project,source of uranium should've noted on file.

[sabro]

The Utah mine was just in the news because several people were poisoned by mud bricks made from slag from the mines. People didn't know... and slowly irradiated themselves.

[Hiroyuki Nagashima]

There seems to be a possibility that the North Korean uranium was mined in the Congo.

[Sukotto]

The Atomic Bomb and the End of World War II: A Collection of Primary Sources

The National Security Archive publishes declassified documents and summaries of them and can be read online.




WW2 was about economics too, ya know. as all wars are.
Stopping fascism was just a great side effect.
It was a matter of the world's empires bumping up against one another.
Author Thomas Mann wrote in "This Peace" (1938) that the matter of appeasing Nazi Germany was a doing of England's ruling class and they were basically ok with Hitler as long as he went after the Commies.
And, if you take the post-war period of propping up dictators of all non-commie or socialist stripes by the US, it sort of makes sense in that context.
or, just another point of view...