Nichols met Sengier in his New York office. Nichols had been ordered to find uranium by the head of the Manhattan Project, General Leslie Groves. He asked if the Union Minière could supply uranium ore, and Sengier's answer became history: "You can have the ore now. It is in New York, a thousand tons of it. I was waiting for your visit." Nichols had heard of the ore from the State Department and Louis Rosen, but was surprised at the amount: 1,200 tons, of which 100 tons was to go to Canada immediately for refining by Eldorado Mining and Refining in Port Hope, Ontario. Nichols and Sengier negotiated a contract, and the Staten Island stockpile was transferred to the United States Army. Since Tizard had informed him about uranium's potential a couple of years earlier, Sengier had a pretty good idea why Nichols had shown up to inquire about his ore deposits, something Nichols elaborated on during a 1965 Voices of the Manhattan Project interview by the journalist Stephane Groueff: In his 1962 book about the Manhattan Project, Now It Can Be Told, Groves wrote that "as a Belgian, Sengier appreciated fully the absolute necessity of an Allied victory." Nichols, when questioned about Sengier's motives, stated: The Shinkolobwe mine had been closed since 1937, and had fallen into disrepair and flooded. The United States Army sent a squad from its Corps of Engineers to restore the mine, expand the aerodromes in Léopoldville and Elisabethville, and build a port in Matadi, on the Congo River. The army also secured the remaining ore (3000 tons) in Shinkolobwe, which was shipped to the United States. In his 1987 book, The Road to Trinity, Nichols wrote: The agreement between the United States, the United Kingdom, and Belgium lasted 10 years and continued after the war. The uranium agreements in part explain Belgium's relative ease in rebuilding its economy after the war, as the country had no debt with the major financial powers. Personal life Sengier was described by author John Gunther in his book Inside Africa as "a tallish man, somewhat portly, with pale skin, white hands, a fringe of shinily white hair, and a short silver mustache clipped with sharp neatness", further stating that he "conveys that pleasant sense of benevolence which comes to an extremely successful man of affairs, after his major work is done." Nichols described meeting Sengier for the first