How Was the Most Expensive Weapon in History Built with the Cheapest Labor in History?

 The atomic bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki remain etched in collective memory as two of the darkest and most shameful episodes of modern history. The cities leveled by the explosions and the lives erased in an instant continue to weigh heavily on humanity’s conscience. Each year, the devastation is remembered as a symbol of the destructive power humans are capable of unleashing.

Yet the explosion was made possible by another form of devastation thousands of kilometers away—one that has largely been pushed outside the narrative of history and deliberately forgotten.

The tragedy of Hiroshima and Nagasaki cannot be fully understood without telling the story of the Congo.

A History Written by the Resource Curse

The Democratic Republic of the Congo, home to some of Africa’s richest underground resources, became one of the most tragic examples of the so-called “resource curse” after European colonial powers set foot on the continent. Its vast mineral wealth did not bring prosperity to the land; it brought hunger, violence, and endless instability.

When Belgium’s King Leopold II ruled the Congo as his personal possession, millions of Congolese were systematically killed for failing to meet rubber production quotas. Many who survived carried the marks of brutality for the rest of their lives—hands and arms cut off as punishment and intimidation. Today, Leopold’s regime is remembered as one of the bloodiest colonial systems in human history.

Unfortunately, this period was not an exception in the Congo’s past. The violence that began under Leopold merely changed form in the decades that followed. Because of its mineral wealth, the Congo has spent the last thirty years trapped in proxy conflicts fueled by the direct or indirect involvement of global powers. While the world advances technologically, Congolese soil continues to pay the price.

The Silent Victims of the Atomic Age

One of the most striking—and least widely known—facts about the Congo is that the uranium at the heart of the atomic bomb was extracted from its soil. The Shinkolobwe Mine in the Katanga region contained deposits of extraordinary richness. Some veins reached uranium concentrations as high as 60 percent—making it one of the purest sources of uranium ever discovered. By contrast, uranium ore in American mines at the time typically contained less than one percent.

This uranium became the essential raw material for the Manhattan Project—the program that ultimately produced the bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

In the late 1930s, the possibility that Nazi Germany might develop nuclear weapons triggered deep anxiety in the United States. Washington was well aware that the world’s richest uranium reserves were located in the Belgian Congo. When Belgium fell under Nazi occupation in 1940, a historic window of opportunity opened.

Belgian Finance Minister Camille Gutt, who had fled the Nazi invasion, entered into secret agreements with U.S. officials—arrangements that were never disclosed to the public. During this process, General Leslie Groves, who would later lead the Manhattan Project, played a key role.

Through these agreements, control over thousands of tons of high-grade uranium stockpiled at Shinkolobwe passed into American hands. The uranium was shipped from the Congo to the United States under the code name “Diamond.” From there, it was transported by armored trains to secret facilities such as Oak Ridge and Los Alamos.

At no point in this logistical chain were Congolese workers told what substance they were extracting or what kind of weapon it would ultimately become.

While the United States spent one of the largest military budgets of its time to develop the atomic bomb, the uranium at the heart of the project was obtained almost for free—at the cost of Congolese laborers’ lives. The most expensive weapon in history was built with the cheapest labor in history.

As the uranium destined to kill hundreds of thousands was transported by armored trains, the workers who mined it had no protection against radiation. How many of them later died of cancer, how many were left disabled, remains unknown—because no records were kept.

After the war, the Shinkolobwe Mine was shut down and effectively erased from maps in order to prevent its uranium from falling into Soviet hands. In doing so, not only a strategic resource but also the suffering of an entire people was rendered invisible.

Visible and Invisible Suffering

The wounds of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have been etched into humanity’s collective memory. The instant horror of the explosions and the generations-long effects of radiation rightfully became symbols of a universal trauma. Through memorials, commemorations, films, and documentaries, this suffering has become a global matter of conscience. The United States, however, has never formally apologized to Japan for the atomic bombings, nor paid any compensation.

Global conscience and memory, however, have always been selective—much like what we see today with Gaza and Sudan.

The people of the Congo, whose suffering remains largely invisible today, were also denied visibility in the past. What happened in Shinkolobwe, where the silent raw material of the same bomb was mined, was buried in the darkness of colonial history. Radiation poisoning went unrecorded; the dead remained nameless.

Today, the exploitation of cobalt and coltan in the Congo is simply the latest link in the same chain. In the atomic age it was uranium; in the digital age it is the minerals that power batteries and smartphones. The names of the resources change, but the price paid by the Congolese people does not.

The Hiroshima Peace Memorial receives the respect it deserves as a warning to humanity. The memorial of Shinkolobwe, by contrast, consists only of abandoned pits and silenced testimonies.

If stories are told incompletely, can a truly universal memory ever exist?

The original version of this article was published in Independent Türkçe.