The unwitting poster child of the Vietnam War has forsaken bitterness for grace
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Her name is Phan Thị Kim Phúc.
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When I recently found myself in the Toronto area, where Kim Phúc has lived for more than 30 years, I reached out to her. We first spoke by phone for two hours. Having been used as a propaganda figure by the Vietnamese government for years after the war, she sought asylum in Canada in 1992. In that call, she spoke with clarity about June 8, 1972, when the South Vietnamese Air Force — and not, as was and is still wrongly believed, the US Air Force — dropped napalm on her village.
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Kim Phúc was 9 years old. She remembers the blast and seeing the fire and watching civilians and Vietnamese soldiers burn to death. 'I lost my future. I lost my freedom. I lost my dream. I lost my hope,' she says of that day. Even now, after years of treatment, she is still in pain.
Kim Phúc did not see who took the Pulitzer Prize-winning photo of her, but she believes Nick Út captured the Pulitzer Prize-winning photo of her, despite
She has identified the South Vietnamese squadron that dropped the napalm on her village, and she has spoken with living witnesses. Surviving veterans have given her a detailed timeline of the events that precipitated the bombing, for which they were ordered to clear sections of Tây Ninh province, notorious for housing Communist guerrilla fighters. They told her of their lasting shame over hitting civilians and fellow South Vietnamese soldiers as they fled a Cao Đài temple where Kim Phúc and others had been seeking refuge.
But after all this time, one mystery remains. For 53 years, members of the unit have refused to reveal the name of the pilot who dropped the bomb. 'Why do you need his name?' they would say, reminding Kim Phúc that knowing it 'won't change anything.' They assured her: He feels guilty. He's in America. He became a vegetarian to atone for his sins.
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While Kim Phúc respects the pilot's privacy, her greatest wish is to find him or his descendants.
'I do want to know who the pilot is — not because I'm angry,' she told me. 'I want to tell him: I survived. I forgave a long time ago. I don't hate you. I would give him a hug. He changed my life without knowing it.'
She seeks neither justice nor publicity. Just a private meeting. Kim Phúc says she longs for one final opportunity for closure and, perhaps, to offer peace to someone — be it the pilot or a family member of his — who might still carry guilt.
How and when did she find such equanimity? I needed to know.
The morning after we spoke by phone, I joined Kim Phúc for her weekly Sunday service at Faithway Baptist Church in Ajax, an Ontario town about 45 minutes outside Toronto. Despite having been raised in the Cao Đài faith, which combines Buddhism, Daoism, and Confucianism, among other spiritual beliefs and practices, Kim Phúc says she finally found the solace she craved when she discovered a copy of the New Testament in Saigon's central library. Against her family's wishes, she converted to Christianity. (Years later, her parents followed her.)
So there I was in mid-May, sitting in the pews beside the now 62-year-old Kim Phúc and her 91-year-old mother, Nữ, who put on headphones as her son-in-law, Kim Phúc's husband, Toàn, translated the pastor's English sermon into Vietnamese. That morning's message touched on the themes of forgiveness and restoration.
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'War makes everyone a victim,' Kim Phúc told me many times. 'Even the ones we think are strong.'
Her life embodies this truth. After resettling in Canada, she channeled her suffering into purpose as a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador and through Kim Foundation International, the nonprofit she founded in 1997 to support international projects that offer medical, living, and educational assistance to young victims of trauma.
'When I see children in war today, I feel their pain like it's mine,' she told me. 'I want to use my voice to help protect them — because I remember what it's like to be them.'
When we discuss our home village — a place I've only visited and Kim Phúc's family was forced to leave as the Vietnam War raged — our connection grows. My father has told me that my uncle, Tân Thúc Hưng, a first lieutenant in the local defense forces, ate regularly at Kim Phúc's family's food stall. Over lunch after service, I asked her mother if she remembered him.
'Ông Hưng? Of course,' she said. 'He was practically family. I remember the last time I saw him. He died the next day.'
That was in 1971. The details surrounding his death have never been clear to my family. We know it happened at a cantina or pool hall on the town's main street, where his duty in psychological operations was to win the hearts and minds of the people. As the story goes, the Viet Cong sent a child into the venue with a grenade disguised as something else. The explosion maimed or killed everyone present.
I immediately wanted to call my dad to tell him: 'Someone else in this world remembers your beloved brother. She might have fed him his last meal.'
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Meeting with Kim Phúc and her parents drove home to me the impossible choices of war: those of the South Vietnamese pilot following orders to stop Viet Cong atrocities; those of my uncle trying to protect his community; Kim Phúc's family's decision to feed even those who might kill them. Everyone was trying to survive forces beyond their control.
Such fragmented memories, passed down through the generations, teach us that history lives in people — in food stalls, shared meals, and the quiet act of remembering someone loved and lost.
The hard reality is that 50 years after the end of the Vietnam War, children still flee bombs across the world. We scroll past images of their suffering, numbed by the endless stream. Kim Phúc's story cuts through that numbness because she lived to tell what comes after the photograph: the choice between bitterness and grace.
Now a mother and grandmother who still bears the scars of the napalm attack, she has refused to let trauma define her. While the world remembers her as the ultimate poster child of war, it's her will to forgive rather than seek vengeance that I will remember her for.
She is so much more than the girl who ran from napalm and became the unwitting subject of a famous photo. Phan Thị Kim Phúc survived terror and chose inner peace.
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