"I wanted to escape that picture": 40 years on from iconic napalm photo, how Vietnam War victim found peace
Now, aged 49 and enjoying a new life in Canada far from the barbaric scenes of her childhood, she has finally found peace
THIS shocking picture of Kim Phuc helped save her life 40 years ago but she has also felt cursed by the image.
She was just nine years old when the iconic war photo of her fleeing an aerial napalm attack in Vietnam stunned the world.
And it is only now, aged 49 and enjoying a new life in Canada far from the barbaric scenes of her childhood, that she has finally found peace.
Growing up, she was still haunted by that terrible day when she ran naked from her burning village as blobs of the highly flammable jelly melted her clothes off and seared into her skin.
In agony, the screaming child happened to sprint towards journalists on the highway and Vietnamese photographer Huynh Cong Ut took the snap before she mercifully lost consciousness.
But as well as capturing the black and white image which laid bare the true horrors of war and helped end one of the most divisive in US history, he drove her to a hospital.
Now, ahead of the anniversary of the bombing on June 8, 1972, Kim has told of the impact it has had on her life.
She survived after multiple skin grafts and dreamed of becoming a doctor.
But the communist regime which later took over her country wanted to use “that napalm girl” as a propaganda tool and made her quit college.
Kim recalls: “I wanted to escape that picture. I got burned by napalm and I became a victim of war but, growing up, I became another kind of victim. I wished I had died.”
Associated Press photographer Ut, then 21, won a Pulitzer Prize for the picture he took after US-backed South Vietnamese planes napalmed the village of Trang Bang, occupied by enemy North Vietnamese forces.
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/vietnam-war-napalm-attack-photo-859272
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