Kim Phuc in 2006 (ASSOCIATED PRESS)
Kim Phuc today lives in Canada and has come to peace about her past.. (Alpha /Landov)
In the picture, the girl will always be 9 years old and wailing “Too hot! Too hot!” as she runs down the road away from her burning Vietnamese village.
It only took a second for Associated Press photographer Huynh Cong “Nick” Ut to snap the iconic black-and-white image 40 years ago. It communicated the horrors of the Vietnam War in a way words could never describe, helping to end one of the most divisive wars in American history.
It was June 8, 1972, when Kim Phuc, now 49, saw the tails of yellow and purple smoke bombs curling around the Cao Dai temple where her family had sheltered for three days, as north and south Vietnamese forces fought for control of their village.
The ground rocked. The threads of her cotton clothes evaporated on contact. In shock, she sprinted down Highway 1 behind her older brother. Then, she lost consciousness.
Ut, the 21-year-old Vietnamese photographer, drove Phuc to a small hospital. There, he was told the child was too far gone to help. But he flashed his press badge and demanded that doctors treat the girl and left assured that she would not be forgotten.
A couple of days after the image shocked the world, another journalist found out the little girl had somehow survived.
“I had no idea where I was or what happened to me,” Phuc said.
Thirty percent of Phuc’s tiny body was scorched raw by third-degree burns, though her face somehow remained untouched.
After multiple skin grafts and surgeries, Phuc was finally allowed to leave. For a while, life did go somewhat back to normal. She was accepted into medical school.
But all that ended once the new communist leaders realized the propaganda value of the “napalm girl” in the photo.
She was forced to quit college and was trotted out to meet foreign journalists. The visits were monitored and controlled, her words scripted.
“I wanted to escape that picture,” she said. “I became another kind of victim.”
She traveled to West Germany in 1982 for medical care with the help of a foreign journalist. Later, Vietnam’s prime minister, also touched by her story, made arrangements for her to study in Cuba.
While at school, Phuc met a young Vietnamese man. They decided to marry in 1992 and honeymoon in Moscow. On the flight back to Cuba, they defected during a fuel stop in Canada. She was free.
Phuc contacted Ut to share the news.
After four decades, Phuc, now a mother of two sons, can finally look at the picture of herself running naked and understand why it remains so powerful. It had saved her, tested her and ultimately freed her.