War is hell! Burned in a misdirected American napalm
attack on the pagoda in which she had sought refuge, 9-year-old Phan Thi Kim Phuc flees in terror near the town of Trang Bang, South Vietnam.
Over half of the girl's body was charred by third-degree burns from
the jellied-gasoline inferno; her two little brothers were instantly
incinerated and a third brother also suffered excruciating burns.
War is hell! Nick Ut, the photographer who took this Pulitzer Prize-winning
picture, rushed the girl to a hospital and may have saved her life.
But it has not been an easy life. Kim Phuc spent over a year in the
hospital recovering from her immediate wounds, and she still has massive
scars over most of her upper body. Most of her oil and sweat glands
were also burned away, and she continues to be assailed by migraine
headaches, diabetes, breathing difficulty, and chronic pain associated
with her trauma. Some 24 years after the searing napalm attack, Ms. Kim
Phuc came to lay a wreath at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington,
D.C. (where she was seen drying a tear as "Taps" was played in memory
of those who died in the Vietnam War). She came seeking reconciliation,
not recrimination, and hugged American veterans. "I have suffered
a lot [of] physical and emotional pain. Sometimes I could not breathe.
But God saved my life and gave me faith and hope," she told the
audience to several standing ovations. "Even if I could talk face
to face with the pilot who dropped the bomb," she went on, "I
would tell him, 'We cannot change history, but we should try to do
good things for the present and for the future to promote peace.'"
Said one tearful American Vietnam veteran, "It's important to
us that she's here, part of the healing process. We were just kids
doing our job. For her to forgive us personally means something."
Kim Phuc said that she also had accepted the invitation by a Vietnam
Veterans group to speak at the memorial in order to tell the world
that "behind that picture of me [at age 9], thousands and thousands
of people suffered more than me. They died. They lost part of their
bodies. Their whole lives were destroyed, and nobody took [their]
picture."1 War is hell! Notes 1. All quotes are from New York Times, November 12, 1996, p. A1. |
2002 McGraw-Hill Higher Education