June 8 in History
1972 – Vietnam War: Nine-year-old Phan Thị Kim Phúc is burned by napalm, an event captured by Associated Press photographer Nick Ut moments later while the young girl is seen running naked down a road, in what would become an iconic, Pulitzer Prize-winning photo
Phan Thị Kim Phúc (born April 6, 1963), and her family were residents of the village of Trảng Bàng in South Vietnam. On this day in1972, South Vietnamese planes dropped napalm on Trảng Bàng, which had been attacked and occupied by North Vietnamese forces. Kim Phúc joined a group of civilians and South Vietnamese soldiers who were fleeing from the Caodai Temple to the safety of South Vietnamese-held positions. The Republic of Vietnam Air Force pilot flying an A-1E Skyraider mistook the group for enemy soldiers and diverted to attack. The bombing killed two of Kim Phúc’s cousins and two other villagers. Kim Phúc (middle left) survived by tearing off her burning clothes and running naked in the street, but received third degree burns.
The image of nine-year-old Kim Phúc, taken for the Associated Press by a 21-year-old Vietnamese-American photographer named Nick Ut, shows her running naked on a road after being severely burned on her back by the napalm attack. This became one of the most haunting images of the Vietnam War. In an interview many years later, she recalled she was yelling, Nóng quá, nóng quá (“too hot, too hot”) in the picture. The New York Times editors were at first hesitant to consider the photo for publication because of the nudity, but they eventually approved it. A cropped version of the photo—with the press photographers to the right removed—was featured on the front page of The New York Times the next day. It later earned a Pulitzer Prize[8] and was chosen as the World Press Photo of the Year for 1973.
After snapping the photograph, Ut took Kim Phúc and the other injured children to Barsky Hospital in Saigon, where it was determined that her burns were so severe that she probably would not survive. After a 14-month hospital stay and 17 surgical procedures, including skin transplantations, she was able to return home. A number of the early operations were performed by Finnish plastic surgeon Aarne Rintala. It was only after treatment at a special hospital in Ludwigshafen, West Germany, in 1982, that Kim Phúc was able to properly move again. Ut continued to visit Kim Phúc until he was evacuated to the United States during the fall of Saigon.
Kim Phúc later founded the Kim Foundation International to provide aid to child victims of war.
-Wikipedia
Photo Caption – ‘The Terror of War’ photograph showing Phan Thi Kim Phuc running down a road near Trảng Bàng, Vietnam, after a napalm bomb was dropped on the village of Trảng Bàng by a plane of the Vietnam Air Force.. Also pictured is her older brother Phan Thanh Tam (aged 12; far left), younger brother Phan Thanh Phuoc (aged 5; background left, looking back), and younger cousins Ho Van Bo and Ho Thi Ting (boy and girl, respectively; middle right). This Associated Press photograph won the 1973 Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography -Associated Press
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