I mentioned earlier that one of my first concerns in my new job was about the supply of raw materials. The most important, of course, was uranium ore. It is sobering to realize in this connection that but for a chance meeting between a Belgian and an Englishman a few months before the outbreak of the war, the Allies might not have been first with the atomic bomb. For the most important source of uranium ore during the war years was the Shinkolobwe Mine in the Belgian Congo and the most important man concerned with its operation was M. Edgar Sengier, the managing director of Union Miniere du Haut Katanga or, as it is usually called, Union Miniere.
In May of 1939, Sengier happened to be in England, in the office of Lord Stonehaven, a fellow director on the Union Miniere Board, when Stonehaven asked him to receive an important scientist. This turned out to be Sir Henry Tizard, the director of the Imperial College of Science and Technology. He asked Sengier to grant the British Government an option on every bit of radium-uranium ore that would be extracted from the Shinkolobwe Mine. Naturally, Sengier refused. As he was leaving, Sir Henry took him by the arm and said most impressively: “Be careful, and never forget that you have in your hands something which may mean a catastrophe to your country and mine if this material were to fall in the hands of a possible enemy.” This remark, coming as it did from a renowned scientist, made a lasting impression on Sengier.
A few days later, he discussed the future possibilities of uranium fission with several French scientists, including Joliot-Curie, a Nobel Prize winner. They proposed a joint effort to attempt the fission of uranium in a bomb to be constructed in the Sahara Desert. Sengier accepted their proposal in principle and agreed to furnish the raw material and to assist in the work. The outbreak of World War II in September, 1939, brought this project to a halt even before it began.
Tizard’s warning and the obvious interest of the French scientists emphasized to Sengier the strategic value of the Katanga ores, which were of exceptional richness, far surpassing in that respect any others that have ever been discovered.
Sengier left Brussels in October of 1939 for New York, where he remained for the rest of the war. From there, he managed the operations of his company, both inside and outside the Belgian Congo, and after the invasion of Belgium in 1940 had to do so without the benefit of any advice from his fellow directors who were in Belgium behind the German lines.
Before his departure from Brussels, he had ordered shipped to the United States and to Great Britain all available radium, about 120 grams, then valued at some $1.8 million. He had also ordered that all uranium ores in stock at the Union Miniere-controlled refining plant in Oolen, Belgium, be sent to the United States. Unfortunately, this order was not complied with promptly; later, owing to the German advance into Belgium, it became impossible to carry it out.
Toward the end of 1940, fearing a possible German invasion of the Belgian Congo, Sengier directed his representatives in Africa to ship discreetly to New York, under whatever ruse was practicable, the very large supply of previously mined uranium ore, then in storage at the Shinkolobwe Mine. All work at the mine had stopped with the outbreak of the war and the equipment had been transferred to vitally important copper and cobalt mining operations for the Allied war effort. In accordance with Sengier’s instructions, over 1,250 tons of uranium ore were shipped by way of the nearest port, Lobito, in Portuguese Angola, during September and October of 1940, and on arrival were stored in a warehouse on Staten Island.
At a meeting in Washington in March, 1942, sponsored by the State Department, the Metals Reserve Corporation, the Raw Materials Board and the Board of Economic Warfare, Sengier was invited to submit a report on the nonferrous metals resources of the Belgian Congo. That same day, in the course of a private conversation with Thomas K. Finletter, then Special Assistant to the State Department on Economic and International Affairs, and Herbert Feis, also of the State Department, who were urging him to double the Belgian Congo’s production of cobalt, Sengier pointed out that Union Miniere had available material that was much more important than cobalt; namely, uranium. Apparently this did not make any impression on the State Department representatives. A little later, in April, Sengier brought the matter up again, emphasizing that much valuable material was stored in a warehouse in New York. This time a little interest was aroused and there was some talk of transferring the ore to Fort Knox, where it would be stored with the national gold reserve.
On April 21, Sengier tried a third time, writing to Finletter: “As I told you previously during our conversation, these ores containing radium and uranium are very valuable.” Still nothing happened.
As is now well known, the State Department was not informed of the atomic project until shortly before the Yalta Conference in February of 1945, when, for compelling reasons, I asked that Secretary Stettinius be told of it. Just why the State Department had been kept completely in the dark, I do not know, except that it was in accordance both with President Roosevelt’s policy of personally conducting international relations and with his disinclination to bring any unnecessary persons into atomic affairs. And it was well known, of course, that there was friction in the higher levels of the department. Nevertheless, it is hard to understand why, with Sengier so insistent on the value of the uranium ore, and knowing that the ore contained radium, the State Department officials did not make a serious effort to determine the real value of the ores. Anyone with even a superficial knowledge of the metals field would have been extremely interested in them because of their radium content. And anyone who was reasonably well read in current publications should have been interested in uranium per se; for the newspapers and magazines by that time had printed a number of articles, such as “The Atom Gives Up” by William L. Laurence, published in the September 7, 1940, Saturday Evening Post.
In my discussions with Colonel Nichols on the afternoon of September 17, the day that I was designated to take charge of the Manhattan Project, one of the first matters that we talked about was the adequacy of the ore supply. As we reviewed the situation, our prospects did not appear to be too satisfactory, except for the possible Sengier ores. The first intimation of their existence had come to the MED only ten days before in a telephone call to Nichols from Fin-letter, the purpose of which was to ask about the urgency of a shipment from New York of some uranium black oxide by African Metals to Canada for refining. Nichols had postponed any definite reply pending investigation, which he promptly began. He soon concluded that African Metals did have sizable stocks of rich ore in the New York area. The S-1 Committee was informed at its California meeting on September 14, and had recommended the acquisition of all available Sengier ore.
Nichols and I agreed that there should be no delay in getting in touch with Sengier, who we understood was the key figure, at least in the United States, in the Belgian Congo uranium picture. Nichols already had an appointment to see him the next morning to explore the ore situation. We knew nothing at that time of Sengier’s previous futile approaches to the State Department.
The next day, when Nichols opened the conversation, Sengier was somewhat guarded in his reply, recalling how the State Department had consistently ignored his repeated proddings. After inspecting Nichols’ credentials, he said: “Colonel, will you tell me first if you have come here merely to talk, or to do business?” Nichols answered diplomatically, as always, that he was there to do business, not to talk. Sengier then really pleased him by saying that it was true that over 1,250 tons of rich ore were stored in some two thousand steel drums in a warehouse on Staten Island.
A delighted Nichols left Sengier’s office an hour later carrying with him a sheet of yellow scratch paper on which were written the essentials of an agreement to turn over to us at once all the ore in th Staten Island warehouse and to ship to the United States all the richer uranium ore aboveground in the Belgian Congo.
A simple handshake proffered by Sengier had sealed the bargain. The exact wording of the written contract would be settled later.
This was typical of the way in which a great many of our most important transactions were carried out. Once the seller understood the importance of our work (and there was no need to explain it in this case), he was invariably perfectly willing to deliver his goods or his services on our oral assurance that fair terms and conditions would be settled at a later date. We always promised that he would not be out-of-pocket for any expenses incurred if for some reason final agreement was not reached. And we always kept that promise.
Union Miniere’s ore was of tremendous value to us, not only because of its quantity but because of its richness.1 With it under our control, we were able to proceed with our atomic development without fear of running out of the basic material, uranium, during the critical war years ahead.
Sengier’s revelation of September 18 made us realize how vastly important he was to the Allied cause, and from that time on we helped him in every way that we could. All the details of our various agreements were kept as secret as possible, including the handling of payments. Here, it was necessary for Sengier to tell the head of his American bank why he was opening a special account, to which would be credited the funds derived from the sale of materials identified under a special number. In order to safeguard this information, it was arranged that the reports of the Federal Reserve Bank would not mention any of these transactions. There was to be a minimum of correspondence on the subject, and the auditors were directed to accept Sengier’s statements without explanation.
1 At the start of our purchases, the hand-sorted tonnage derived from the mine contained an average of over 65 per cent uranium oxide. This seems almost incredible when it is realized that ores from the Colorado Plateau and Canada, which contain two-tenths of one per cent ore, are of marketable quality, and the South African uranium ores derived from gold-mining operations have a uranium oxide content of the order of .03 per cent.