On June 8, 1972, children and their families fled the village of Trang Bang down Route-1, their bodies seared by napalm. The young girl screaming, in particular, was etched onto the world's mind by the photograph of Huynh Cong 'Nick' Ut, an AP photographer.
The girl was Phan Thi Kim Phuc.
The photograph showing excruciating pain and death has become a photographic icon, an antiwar rallying point and a symbol of hope. The photograph rightly stands among a few honorable and memorable images of the last 150 years of photojournalism.
Photographer Huynh Cong Ut, known by his colleagues as Nick, was working there as a photo journalist for Associated Press at the time and took a number of photographs of the villagers trying to escape the napalm. This one, epitomising the savagery and tragedy of the conflict, won him the coveted Pulitzer Prize and became one of the most published photos of the Vietnam war.
The picture taken near the village of Trang Bang in South Vietnam on June 8, 1972, thrust the burned, screaming youngster into photographic history. The London "Observer" Sunday paper calls the photograph "the most haunting image of the horror of war since Goya" in their review of the exhibit (by science writer Deyan Sudjic).
Kim went on to survive although it took 14 months of painful rehabilitation to treat the third degree burns that was over more than half of her body.
The boy is her older brother Tam who survived the attack but lost an eye. Ut (the photographer) poured water onto the young girl and took her and some of the other children to a hospital near Saigon where she spent fourteen months recovering from the horrific burns to her skin.
Kim is now a Canadian citizen and shares her thoughts on survival and inspiration. She has traveled all over the world, meeting and talking with people about peace. She is now a Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
