There would be few people who lived through the Vietnam War years that would have not seen the photo of “The Napalm Girl”. And perhaps only a few would know of the name of the girl, or of the photographer who took the picture.
June 8, 1971, Nick Ut was on assignment for Associated Press near the village of Trang Bang. What happened next is well covered by pages all over the web and doesn’t need me to reblog it here.
I have thought long about bringing up the topic, but what I wanted to stress was the compassion of Nick toward the badly burned Kim Phuc.
Again his words are so much more profound than mine, but he managed to get the young girl to hospital and then transferred to a burns unit, and stayed to make sure she was well looked after.
Many have said it was one of the defining images of the war that helped turn the tide of support to bring the war to an end. Nick won a Pulitzer Prize for the photo, Horst Faas, the editor at AP ran the story, breaking a number of rules about nudity and content, but believed the story must be told.
So 50 years on here are several links to the story of the horror of Kim Phuc and the compassion of one man, determined to make a difference.
This one turned up on the ABC news site this morning and has a small video clip of Kim Phuc and Nick Ut reunion.
A more indepth article by Nick Ut from the Washington Post and it shows how he stayed in touch with her over the years.
And another from Joe McNally of a 40th anniversary shoot with Kim and her new baby. (I know I’ve linked to this in a previous blog, so apologise if you’ve seen it before.)
Kim started a Foundation dedicated to Healing Children of War and here is the site
I’ve chosen not to include a photograph for this blog page.
Some things pale into insignificance.
Speaking with kindness creates confidence,
thinking with kindness creates profoundness,
giving with kindness creates love.
Lao Tzu
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