"Marching On."

hussyknee:

themightyfoo:
icedsodapop:
a-forger-and-a-point-man:
Full story here
The Congolese people as well:
Oppenheimer film: These were the atrocities afflicted on Africans in search of uranium for the nuclear bomb
Before watching “Oppenheimer”, there is a dark history behind the creation of the nuclear bomb that you should know about.
iol.co.za
Most of the uranium used to build the atomic bombs were mined in Shinkolobwe in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The Congolese people had to work in the uranium mines without protection. Exposure to uraniun could result in negative health impacts such as: renal failure, decreased bone formation, cancer, issues with fertility etc. The labor of the Congolese people for the Manhatten Project were kept secret until recently, and still no research has been conducted on the long-term consequences of uranium intake in the people at the extraction site in the Congo.
And this is why the narrative surrounding Oppenheimer (the man himself and the film) makes me angry. The atomic bombs are a product of colonialism. It was a bomb funded by a settler colony (USA), it’s materials are dug from a colony (DRC) by colonized people (the Congolese) and tested on colonized lands (Hispanic village of Tularosa and Mescalero Apache Reservation). But, the narrative that always gets perpetuated is of the tragedy of a brillant White man and his deadly creation, the many Black and Brown people who became collateral damage of the creation are always erased. And it says A LOT about whose labor and pain matters.
After the War, debate raged about what to do with the Bomb. Throughout 1945-1946 there was serious discussion at the UN (which mattered a great deal more then than it does now) about banning atomic weapons, and there was a realistic chance that the US might go along with it. US Secretary of State James Byrnes was having none of that. He used his leverage with his political protégé, Harry Truman, to schedule a “test” (i.e., political demonstration) at Bikini Atoll, occupied by the US Navy. The Bikini natives were rounded up against their will and relocated to an uninhabited island. Problem was, there was a good reason no one lived there - it had no lagoon or protective reef, so fishing was impossible. By the time the US Government got around to checking on them the Bikinians were facing starvation. They got passed around from one agency to another while Congress thumbed its nose at a legal decision that the US Government owed the Bikinians reparations for confiscating their home.
To this day they have not been allowed to return to Bikini.
Linking these excerpts about human experimentation with Plutonium on disabled children and pregnant mothers to develop PPE for the Manhattan Project. ( Scroll down)
Twitter is being horrendously racist towards Asian, Hispanos and Indigenous people trying to talk about this, so please boost these posts at least here.