'Napalm Girl,' now 62, says don't turn from ugly reality of war

The Mainichi

04-05-2025

TORONTO (Kyodo) -- Of all the photos of all the conflicts of the past century, one from the Vietnam War sent shock waves around the world, searing the horror into the minds of millions of people.
The Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph shows a 9-year-old girl crying as she runs down a road, her naked body severely burned by a napalm attack.
Ahead of the 50th anniversary of the end of the war on April 30, Phan Thi Kim Phuc, now 62, the South Vietnamese-born Canadian woman depicted in the photo, shared her hope that people will not turn away from the ugly reality of children being sacrificed in war.
The image -- widely considered one of the most iconic symbols of the war -- came to torment Kim Phuc before she understood its power to convey the horrors of war. Chatting with her today, her exuberance, laughter and smiles belie her painful past.
On June 8, 1972, Kim Phuc, other family members and villagers had taken shelter at a temple in the town of Trang Bang in Tay Ninh Province, but South Vietnamese soldiers on duty suddenly yelled for everyone to flee.
The children had been playing in the temple courtyard. When Kim Phuc got onto the road, she turned briefly and saw a plane drop four bombs.
She heard a deep concussive wave of muted thunderclaps. A roaring inferno of thick greasy blooms followed, flames rapidly spreading.
Packed with an incendiary mixture of a gelling agent and volatile petrochemicals, the fire quickly engulfed Kim Phuc's clothes, left arm and back.
"Suddenly there was fire everywhere around me...my clothes burned off," Kim Phuc told Kyodo News in a recent interview in the suburbs of Toronto where she now resides.
South Vietnamese bombers had mistakenly dropped napalm on Trang Bang, which had been attacked and occupied by the North Vietnamese.
Kim Phuc tried to pat out the flames with her right hand. She continued to run with the other terrified children while crying, "Too hot! Too hot!"
Associated Press photographer Nick Ut captured the moment in the black-and-white image that ran in newspapers around the world. Titled "The Terror of War," the photo won a Pulitzer Prize.
The U.S. military made extensive use of napalm munitions developed in World War II and sprayed Agent Orange defoliant in the dense forests where the Liberation Army of South Vietnam was based.
During the attack, Kim Phuc passed out after a South Vietnamese soldier poured water over her, and she had no recollection of what happened immediately afterward.
Two of her relatives, including her 3-year-old "favorite cousin," died in the attack. Ut helped put Kim Phuc in an AP van that rushed her to the nearest hospital. "Their stories became my story because I passed out. They told me about it later," she said.
The first facility she was taken to was unable to treat her, and at the second, a children's hospital in Saigon, she was given a slim chance of survival. After a few days' search, her mother and brother found her in the hospital's morgue, where she had been left for dead.
But at her father's insistence, Kim Phuc was moved to a burn clinic, where she received life-saving blood transfusions from her mother via her ankle, as it was almost impossible to find a vein in other parts of her dehydrated body.
She had several skin grafts, had to take burn baths and underwent other treatments including excision of burnt skin that was so painful she would often pass out. She was in the hospital for such a long period that she forgot how to walk.
A little over a year later, when she first saw Ut's photo published in a local newspaper, Kim Phuc felt a strong sense of disgust, wondering why a photo of her looking "so naked, so ugly" had been taken and printed.
"I hated that picture, of course, the first time. I was a little girl," she said. "All people want to take beautiful pictures to have good memories, but that was not a good memory."
Physical and emotional scars ran deep and she became pessimistic about her future. When she returned to her home, her close friend shunned her out of fear of her scars. "I don't blame her because as a child she was scared to death to see her friend so different. It just broke my heart."
Because of the scars and constant pain, Kim Phuc thought that she would never get married later in life or have "a normal family." She would hide her scars under her clothing whenever possible.
Kim Phuc had admired the doctors at the hospital who treated her with compassion, so she studied hard and entered medical school in 1982. However, the photo shattered her dream.
The Vietnamese government had rediscovered her as the "Napalm Girl." At the request of foreign media seeking an interview with her, the government used her as a symbol of anti-American sentiment. Officials often called her for interviews and later forced her to drop out of school.
"They controlled me. I became a prisoner," she said.
It was during such dark times that Kim Phuc thought she would have been better off if she had died in the napalm attack. Searching for meaning in survival, she read religious books, became interested in Christianity, and later converted. She felt her spirit soar when she "forgave and prayed for her enemies," she said.
In 1986, she was allowed to study in Cuba, a welcome respite from the constant barrage of foreign media looking to retell her story. In Havana, she met her future husband, a student from North Vietnam, and they married in 1992.
On the return journey from their honeymoon in Moscow, the newlyweds had a layover in Newfoundland, Canada, and successfully sought asylum. They settled in Toronto and had two sons.
Even in Canada, Kim Phuc feared media attention. In 1995, she was discovered by a British journalist in Toronto, who took her photo in public and published it without her permission.
At first, she tried to hide from her past, but eventually for the sake of all children she decided to embrace the photo as "a powerful gift" to support antiwar efforts. She established The Kim Foundation International to support children who have been victimized by war.
Through her foundation and public speaking engagements, she aims to educate people about the devastating impacts of war and promote messages of peace, healing, and understanding.
Along with other images of children suffering, Ut's photo of Kim Phuc had a huge impact internationally, resulting in growing opposition to the war. South Vietnam surrendered to North Vietnamese forces on April 30, 1975.
Kim Phuc says she is heartbroken by the children who have been killed in Russia's invasion of Ukraine and in the fighting in the Gaza Strip. She believes the world must bear witness to their suffering.
"No matter how ugly and cruel the pictures are, they are the reality of war, and people have to face them," she said.