Vietnam Napalm Girl From FamousPicturesMagazine

Vietnam Napalm Girl

From FamousPicturesMagazine

Contents [hide] 1 Air Strike on Trang Bang 2 Life after the napalm 3 Who ordered the Strike 4 Nick Ut 5 Gallery 6 Comments			This Image is small because it is copyrighted. Click for larger version
Picture Taken On: June 8, 1972	Place: On the Vietnamese highway (Route 1) that leads from Saigon towards the Cambodian border just outside the village of Trang Bang, about 25 miles WNW of Saigon.	Behind the Camera: Associated Press photographer Nick Út (Also known as Huynh Cong Út), ITN news crew including Christopher Wain and cameraman great Alan Downes. Also there was NBC cameraman Le Phuc Dinh who filmed Kim running towards the reporters.	Picture Summary: Kim Phuc (aged 9) running naked in the middle with her older brother, Phan Thanh Tam (12), crying out to the left. Her younger brother, Phan Thanh Phuoc (5), to the left looking back at the village and to the right are Kim Phu's small cousins Ho Van Bo, a boy, and Ho Thi Ting, a girl.

This photo of Kim Phuc (full name Phan Thị Kim Phúc) was taken just after South Vietnamese planes bombed her village. She had only lived because she tore off her burning clothes. AP Photographer Nick Út and NBC cameraman Le Phuc Dinh filmed her and her family emerging from the village, after the air strike, running for their lives. This photo has become one of the most famous and memorable photos of Vietnam and won Nick Út the Pulitzer prize in 1972.

Air Strike on Trang Bang

AP reporter Nick Út was among a number of reporters sent to the small village of Trang Bang along Route 1, the highway that leads from Saigon towards the Cambodian border. Travelling with Nick was ITN correspondent, Christopher Wain, North Vietnamese troops had taken control of the Highway there and Nick was sent to cover the South Vietnamese soldiers from the 25th Army Division who were ordered to retake Trang Bang and open the Highway. When Nick arrived he and other reporters also on assignment stood with South Vietnamese soldiers just outside the village watching the action.

The South Vietnamese commander of the unit requested an air strike and propeller driven Skyraiders, Korean-war vintage planes from the 518th Vietnamese Airforce Squadron, dropped Napalm on the village. When the smoke cleared villagers from the Trang Bang ran screaming from the village to the soldiers and reporters up the road. Taking pictures with two cameras, his Leica and a Nikon with a long lens, Nick Út remembers seeing Kim Phuc running naked down the street:

As soon as she saw me, she said: "I want some water, I'm too hot, too hot," - in Vietnamese, "Nong qua, nong qua!" And she wanted something to drink. I got her some water. She drank it and I told her I would help her. I picked up Kim and took her to my car. I ran up about 10 miles to Cu Chi hospital, to try to save her life. At the hospital, there were so many Vietnamese people - soldiers were dying there. They didn't care about the children. Then I told them: "I am a media reporter, please help her, I don't want her to die." And the people helped her right away. Nick Út

Christopher Wain also remembers the event after the napalm struck:

There was a blast of heat which felt like someone had opened the door of an oven. Then we saw Kim and the rest of the children. None of them were making any sound at all - until they saw the adults. Then they started to scream. We were short of film and my cameraman, the late, great Alan Downes, was worried that I was asking him to waste precious film shooting horrific pictures which were too awful to use. My attitude was that we needed to show what it was like, and to their lasting credit, ITN ran the shots.

Nick quickly realised that without help Kim would die and so drove her and other injured family members to the hospital. Kim already thought she was doomed and while reporters and soldiers tried to treat her horrible wounds she told her brother Tam, "I think I am going to die." Driving an hour to the provincial Vietnamese hospital in Cu Chi, halfway up the highway to Saigon, Kim passed out from the pain.

The hospital was used to war injuries, and after years of civil war knew that Kim's chances of living were slim to none and tried to triage her, or put her aside so they could treat other wounded who had better chances of living. Only at Nick's urging that the girl had been photographed and her picture would be shown all over the world did the hospital staff agree to operate. Nick didn't leave to develop his film until she was put on the operating table. At first his editors refused to run it because she was naked but when Nick explained that she had no clothes because they had been burned off her body they changed their minds and sent it around the world.

Life after the napalm

On June 12, 1972 then American President Richard Nixon was recorded talking to his chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, discussing the Vietnam War. Among other things he was recorded saying they should use the Atomic bomb in Vietnam and talking about Kim's photo said, "I'm wondering if that was fixed," Haldeman replied, "Could have been."

While Nixon debated with his staff about whether she was a fraud Kim defied all expectations and after a 14 month hospital stay and 17 surgical procedures, she returned home to the napalm bombed village of Trang Bang. Nick continued to visit until the fall of Saigon three years later, in 1975, when he along with other American media employees were evacuated.

As Kim grew up there was a lot of pressure from government and anti-war groups who forced her to be used as an anti-war symbol. She requested and was eventually granted permission to move to Cuba to study pharmacy. It was in Cuba that she meet her future husband, Bui Huy Tuan. They were married and a Korean friend paid for a vacation to Moscow in 1992. On the return flight their plane stopped over in Gander, Newfoundland, a province in Canada. As it was refuelling she and her husband walked off and defected to the Canadian government.

The two live in Ajax, Ontario Canada and have two children, Thomas and Stephen. In 1997 she established the Kim Foundation a non profit charitable organization that funds medical care for child victims of war around the world. For her charity work she was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Law from York University in Toronto, Ontario, in 2002, the Queen’s Golden Jubilee Medal in 2002, and the Order of Ontario in 2004.

These days find her touring the world and giving speeches at churches and schools talking about her story, the Kim Foundation and her hopes for peace:

I should have died My skin should have burned off my body But I'm still beautiful, right? ...Don't see a little girl crying out in fear and pain See her as crying out for peace.

Who ordered the Strike

The picture has since became a powerful anti-war piece and symbolizes everything wrong with American involvement in Vietnam. This is ironic considering a South Vietnamese commander ordered an airstrike carried out by the South Vietnamese Airforce which was flown by Vietnamese pilots. By June 1972 the "Vietnamization" (The handing over of American duties to their South Vietnamese counterparts) in the country was in full swing and most Americans had been withdrawn back to the States.

But did America have any involvement in the air strike? In 1996 Kim gave speech at the United States Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. on Veterans Day where she said that we cannot change the past but can work for a peaceful future. After the speech, Vietnam war veteran John Plummer, now a Methodist minister, talked to some of his old buddies and got them to ask if she would like to meet him for he stated that he was the one who ordered the bombing. She accepted and they met briefly and Plummer remembers that, "as I approached her, she saw my grief, my pain, my sorrow. She held out her arms to me and we embraced. All I could say was "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry' over and over again. And I heard her saying to me "It's all right. It's all right. I forgive. I forgive." He also claims that later in the day, they knelt together (Kim had converted to Christianity in Vietnam) and prayed together. Plummer said, "Finally, I was free. I had found peace." .

Plummer claimed that he received a call from an American military adviser working with a South Vietnamese army unit, who requested an air strike on the village of Trang Bang. He relayed the request for a strike to U.S. Air Force personnel, who asked the South Vietnamese air force to launch it. Later, he saw the photo in Stars and Stripes, and recognized the bombing as one in which he was involved.

His version of events sparked a quite a bit of controversy as he originally was quoted as saying he ordered the attack. His former superior, retired Maj. Gen. Niles J. Fulwyler, was quoted as saying that Plummer didn't have the authority to order the attack and that, "He did not direct the Vietnamese aircraft in that attack,". In response to outraged Vietnam vets claiming he exaggerated his role in the bombing Plummer has since said that while he didn't order the attack he definitely relayed the orders to others in the military machine.

Nick Ut

Nick Ut (born March 29, 1951 as Huynh Cong Ut) is a Vietnamese photographer born in the town of Long An, then part of South Vietnam. On January 1, 1966 when Ut was only 14 he began to take photos for the Associated Press after his older brother Huynh Thanh My, another AP photographer, was killed in Vietnam. While covering the war Ut was wounded three times. When the South Vietnam fell Ut moved and worked for the Korean, and Japanese branches of AP before settling in Los Angles, America in 1977. Ut and his wife, Le Tuyet Hong, live in Monterey Park, California, with their two children.

In LA he became a celebrity photographer and in 2007 famously captured Paris Hilton being forced back to prison exactly 35 years after taking the Napalm Girl photo. When New York Daly News asked about the Paris Hilton shot Ut replied, "I was lucky to get the shot I did, I focused on her blond hair when she got out." when asked about celebrity versus war photography, he only said, "It's very different." The Paris Hilton shot gained even more media controversy when it emerged that standing beside Ut was photographer Karl Larsen who took a similar shot. Many media outlets used Larsen's picture and credited it as Ut's. Larsen ended up having to sue stations like ABC for lost revenue.

Picture power: Vietnam napalm attack
Vietnamese photographer Nick Ut describes the day in June 1972 when he photographed a nine-year-old girl, Kim Phuc, fleeing her village after a napalm attack - a picture that won him a Pulitzer prize. The picture shows Kim, when her skin is burned so badly. Behind Kim, you see all the South Vietnamese armies running with her, together. Enlarge Image And next to Kim, her older brother and one young brother looking back to the black smoke, and another two [members of] her family. She looked ever so bad - I thought that she would die. You know, I had been outside the village that morning and I took a lot of pictures. I was almost leaving the village when I saw two aeroplanes. The first dropped four bombs and the second aeroplane dropped another four napalm [bombs]. Water And five minutes later, I saw people running, calling "Help! Please help!" As soon as she saw me, she said: "I want some water, I'm too hot, too hot," - in Vietnamese, "Nong qua, nong qua!" Kim Phuc and Nick a year later Listen to Nick Ut And she wanted something to drink. I got her some water. She drank it and I told her I would help her. I picked up Kim and took her to my car. I ran up about 10 miles to Cu Chi hospital, to try to save her life. At the hospital, there were so many Vietnamese people - soldiers were dying there. They didn't care about the children. Then I told them: "I am a media reporter, please help her, I don't want her to die." And the people helped her right away. Uncle Nick I have never had a picture like it, all my life. All my foreign editors decided they wanted to send the picture to America. At first they didn't like the picture because the girl had no clothes. Then I told them about the napalm erupting in the village. Kim Phuc now lives in Canada Vietnam War: History In pictures: The North's war The pictures were shown in America, they were shown everywhere. They were shown in all the Communist countries - in China and in Vietnam. They still use the photo. Even though pictures [are taken] in every war, they still show the picture of Kim. They don't want it to happen again - not napalm. After I took the picture of Kim, I took to her very well - I always went to visit, to see her family, and she called me Uncle Nick. Even now I call her once a week - she lives in Toronto, Canada. We are like a family now. Nick Ut gave this account to the BBC World Service programme, The World Today.		POWERFUL PICTURES Oklahoma tragedy Amateur Charles Porter on taking the defining image of the Oklahoma bombing Napalm in Vietnam Nick Ut on his picture of a young girl, Kim Phuc, fleeing a napalmed village Misery in Darfur Marcus Bleasdale describes taking a striking image of suffering from Sudan Death in Iraq Ken Jarecke recalls taking his 1991 shot of the charred body of an Iraqi soldier RELATED BBC LINKS: Vietnam War: History

Nick Ut taker of the Napalm Girl photo in Vietnam – A pure honor to shake his hand

In 1972 when Nick Ut was just 19 and working for the Associated Press he took one of the two most famous and staggeringly important images of the Vietnam, the photo of Kim Phuc the young girl who was running from a village naked covered in burns from a US napalm strike on a village.

After taking the photos Nick scooped up the girl and took her to the hospital. To this day they are close and she has become a powerful campaigner for peace and forgiveness.

The following interesting comment about Nixon and the photo is listed on Wikipedia

Audio tapes of then-president Richard Nixon in conversation with his chief of staff, H. R. Haldeman, show that Nixon doubted the veracity of the photograph, musing whether it may have been “fixed.”[3] Following the release of this tape, Ut commented:
“ “Even though it has become one of the most memorable images of the twentieth century, President Nixon once doubted the authenticity of my photograph when he saw it in the papers on June 12, 1972…. The picture for me and unquestionably for many others could not have been more real. The photo was as authentic as the Vietnam war itself. The horror of the Vietnam war recorded by me did not have to be fixed. That terrified little girl is still alive today and has become an eloquent testimony to the authenticity of that photo. That moment thirty years ago will be one Kim Phuc and I will never forget. It has ultimately changed both our lives” ”

— Nick Ut[4]

Another great quote is
“ …an editor at the AP rejected the photo of Kim Phuc running down the road without clothing because it showed frontal nudity. Pictures of nudes of all ages and sexes, and especially frontal views were an absolute no-no at the Associated Press in 1972…Horst argued by telex with the New York head-office that an exception must be made, with the compromise that no close-up of the girl Kim Phuc alone would be transmitted. The New York photo editor, Hal Buell, agreed that the news value of the photograph overrode any reservations about nudity. ”

— Nick Ut[2

He seemed a very sweet guy when we had dinner but it was a great honor just to shake the hand of someone who truly helped shape history for the better.

KIM'S STORY
The Road from Vietnam
A film by Shelley Saywell
Canada, 47'

Two years ago in Gander, Newfoundland, a young Vietnamese woman disembarked from a plane refuelling from Moscow to Cuba and asked for asylum in Canada. Her name is Kim Phuc and she was the girl on the famous 1972 photograph that brought the world's attention to the horrors of the war in Vietnam. Today she is in her thirties and mother of a baby boy named Huan. She met her husband Bui Huy Toan when they were both studying in Cuba. Today they live in Toronto and have become Canadian citizens. Kim has been named recently United Nations Goodwill Ambassador. She also recently had a second child. If there was one photograph that captured the horrific nature of the Vietnam war, one photograph that tore at our collective conscience, it was the picture of a nine year old girl, running naked down a road, screaming in agony from the jellied gasoline coating her body and burning through skin and muscle down the bone. Her village in the Central Highlands of Vietnam was napalmed that day in 1972, and the little girl took a direct hit. It would take many years, and 17 operations to save her life. And when she finally felt well enough to put it behind her, that very photograph would make her a victim, all over again. The story of that day - June 8, 1972 - and subsequent events in the years that followed will now be fully told on television for the first time. Kim's Story is both a universal and a deeply personal story. It parallells the fate of Vietnam itself. Both Kim's suffering, and her courageous recovery mirrors that of a whole people. It is also the story of how one little girl's tragedy would be used by all sides. Peace activists, journalists from all over the world, and Vietnamese government officials saw Kim as a symbol, not a person.She wants to tell her story now, just once as a testimony. Then, she wants to move on. Kim was born in 1963 in the hamlet of Trang Bang, 30 miles north of Saigon. Her full name means "Golden Happiness" in Vietnamese. She remembers happiness despite a childhood of war. On that tragic day in June 1972, the tiny hamlet of Trang Bang was occupied by NLF forces. The South Vietnamese Army's 25th Division was called in and heavy bombing began. At 2pm the South Vietnamese dropped white phosphorous marker bombs. As she ran with the other children, four drums of napalm dropped on the road. Two of her infant brothers were killed instantly. "I saw the bombs. I saw the fire. There was a terrible heat," Kim remembers. "I tore off my burning clothes. But the burning didn't stop. People poured water over me from their canteens. Then I fainted." The AP photographer who captured those horrific moments was Nick Ut. He drove her to a hospital. He would never forget that one little girl. He continued to visit her in the hospital, bring her books and gifts and eventually set up a fund for donations to her family. The photograph he snapped of her agony was instantly transmitted around the world. It would win him a Pulitzer and change both their lives. Kim would spend the next 14 months in the hospital. She was covered with third-degree burns over half her body and was not expected to live. Her pain was almost unbearable. Her surgeon Dr. Mark Gorney of San Francisco volunteered at the Barksy children's plastic surgery hospital in Saigon. When he first saw her, Kim's chin was welded to her chest by scar tissue and her left arm was burnt almost to the bone. During this period, documentary footage was shot on Kim's recovery. Her mother was by her bedside, helping the little girl through the trauma. Kim said to herself she would become a doctor like the man who saved her. In this film we will attempt to reunite Kim with Dr. Gorney and photographer Nick Ut, both now living in California. After two years of treatments, Kim returned to her village. In 1982, ten years after the famous photograph, Kim's life changed again. She was in pre-medical studies in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) when the Vietnamese government contacted her. They had been looking for her for over a year at the request of a Dutch journalist who wanted to "find the girl in the photograph." When his subsequent documentary on her revived her fame, they yanked her out of university - deciding she was too valuable to them and daily supervised her schedule as "national symbol of the war."Every time she tried to evade the officials, another foreign journalist would track her down and expose her. "It was a nightmare" she says. In 1985 the foreign press corps flocked to Ho Chi Minh City to cover the tenth anniversary of Vietnam's "Liberation." Kim was again offered up by authorities as one of their main celebrities, and all three main US. networks carried interviews with "the girl in the photograph." Finally, in 1986, the government agreed to let Kim continue her studies, under their supervision - in Cuba. Even there she was "managed" and when an American Peace group invited her to tour the United States in 1989, Vietnamese officials cancelled the trip at the last moment. An article in the Los Angeles Times written in preparation for the tour revived Kim's fame once more. She received hundreds of letter from American Vietnam veterans "apologising to me." She met her husband there and they decided to marry. Vietnamese officials gave them permission to honeymoon in Moscow. But secretly she was planning their escape... All these years later, the photograph of the little girl retains its haunting power. To Kim it is "my photograph, of my own war." Yet somehow it belongs to everyone; the one image more than any other that turned public opinion against the war. Now, as Vietnam and the United States finally move toward full diplomatic recognition, this documentary hopefully contributes to a process of healing of this century's longest, most divisive war.