It has been 50 years since Nick Ut, an American-Vietnamese photographer, clicked one of the most defining images of the Vietnam war.
The photo, taken on June 8, 1972, captured a young child running to escape the impact of the Napalm bombing of a Vietnam village by the US forces.
The image that conveyed the brutality of the war then went on to win the Pulitzer Prize.
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Notably, Ut helped the child and drove her to the hospital immediately after clicking the photograph, to treat the burns on her skin. The girl in the picture, Kim Phuc Phan Thi, is today an activist for peace and wants her legacy to be about survival.
Writing an opinion piece titled ‘It’s Been 50 Years. I Am Not ‘Napalm Girl’ Anymore’ in The New York Times on June 6, Kim Phuc described her complicated feelings about the image.
Prior to that on June 2, Ut also wrote an article in The Washington Post titled: ‘A single photo can change the world. I know, because I took one that did.’
How was the picture clicked?
On June 7, 1972, Ut – who worked for the Associated Press at that time – learned about fighting taking place in Trang Bang, a village about 50 km away from the city of Saigon.
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He reached there the next day and saw “rows of bodies by the side of the road and hundreds of refugees fleeing the area”.
Ut then began capturing images of a plane dropping four napalm bombs. Napalm bombs were made using jelly-like substances, such that they would stick to the skin of a target. It was later banned from being used on civilians by a UN treaty of 1981.
The photojournalist found many people hiding inside a temple for shelter as bombs dropped.
It was around that time that Ut and other journalists saw people, including nine-year-old Phan Thi Kim Phuc, fleeing the bombing.
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As Ut captured Kim Phuc’s pictures, she was heard shouting “Nong qua! Nong qua!” (Too hot! Too hot!). The nine-year-old “had pulled off her burning clothes and was running.”
Kim Phuc had suffered third-degree burns on 30 per cent of her body and, when Ut, according to his June 2 article, drove her to the hospital, the doctors were overwhelmed by a rush of patients. Upon their refusal to treat her, Ut showed them his press badge and said, “If one of them dies, I will make sure the whole world knows.”
What happened to the girl?
In 1972, Kim Phuc was stabilized and treated for more than 14 months at the hospital where Ut had taken her. The photojournalist later visited her and her family in the village from where she had been rescued.
Kim Phuc would go on to meet her future husband in Cuba, where she was sent by the government to study medicine. She later took asylum in Canada.
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About the picture, she recently wrote, “Nick changed my life forever with that remarkable photograph. But he also saved my life.”
She also added that seeing herself naked made her feel some hatred towards Ut at times, and she felt “ugly and ashamed”.
“The photograph became even more famous, making it more difficult to navigate my private and emotional life…The child running down the street became a symbol of the horrors of war…Photographs, by definition, capture a moment in time. But the surviving people in these photographs, especially the children, must somehow go on. We are not symbols. We are human. We must find work, people to love, communities to embrace, places to learn and to be nurtured,” she wrote.
Kim Phuc now runs the Kim Foundation International, and has found purpose in “providing medical and psychological assistance to children victimized by war”.
