Can a Photo Change
the World?
This
was the caption of a recent poignant photo published in The Hamilton
Spectator (and in media around the world) ~ a
heart-breaking image of a police officer carrying the body of a
three-year-old Syrian boy who was washed ashore on a Turkish beach
after the dinghy carrying several refugees capsized in rough
waters...all perished. Paul
Berton, editor of the foregoing newspaper, was severely criticized
for allowing this colour photograph to be publicly posted. I
strongly support his decision to do so. This photo by Associated
Press
'Speaks Volumes' about the atrocities of wars!
Strongly, I related to another 'child photo' of a South Vietnamese
girl, who with other children and soldiers were escaping from bombs
that exploded upon their home-village on June 8, 1972. It is her
story, I share with you today.
Forgiveness has nothing to do with absolving a criminal of his
crime.
It has everything to do with relieving oneself of the burden of
being a victim ~
letting go of the pain and transferring oneself from 'victim to
survivor'.
(C.R. Strahan)
It is important for people to know, that no matter what lies in
their past,
they can overcome the dark side...and press on to the brighter
world.
(Dave Pelzer)
Phan
Thi Kim Phuc
In
this Vietnamese name, the family name is 'Phan'.
According to Vietnamese custom, this person should properly be
referred to
by
the given name...'Kim
Phuc'.
Kim
is best known as the child depicted in the Pulitzer Prize-winning
photograph taken during the Vietnam War on June 8, 1972. The iconic
photo taken in Trang Bang by Associated
Press photographer, Nick Ut,
shows her at nine years of age running naked on a road after being
severely burned on her back by a South Vietnamese attack. Kim Phuc
joined a group children, civilians and South Vietnam soldiers who
were fleeing from the Cao Dai Temple to the safety of South
Vietnamese-held positions. The bombing killed two of her brothers and
villagers. Kim Phuc was badly burned and tore off her clothes as she
yelled
Nong qua,
nong qua...(too hot, too hot)
in
the picture.
New
York Times editors
were at first hesitant to consider the photo
for publication because of the nudity, but eventually approved it.
Featured
on the front page of the New
York Times next
day,
it
earned a Pulitzer
Prize and
was chosen as the
World Press Photo of the Year for 1972.
A less publicized film shot by British television cameraman, Alan
Downes for the British ITN news service and his Vietnamese
counterpart Le Phuc Dinh was working for the American station, NBC,
showed the events before and after the photograph was taken by Nick
Ut. One photo is of him taking photographs as a passing airplane
drops bombs. A group of children, Kim Phuc among them, run away in
fear. After a few seconds, she encounters the reporters dressed in
military fatigues, including Christopher Wain, who gave her water and
poured some over her burns. As she turns sideways, the severity of
her burns on her arm and back can be seen. A crying woman runs in
the opposite direction holding her badly burned child.
It was June 8, 1972, when Phuc heard the soldiers scream,
“We
have to run out of this place! They will bomb here and we will be
dead!”
Seconds
later, she 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; then the heat of a hundred furnaces
exploded as orange flames spit in all directions. Fire danced up
Phuc's left arm. The threads of her cotton clothes evaporated on
contact. Trees became angry torches. Searing pain bit through skin
and muscle. “I
will be ugly, and I'm not be normal anymore,”
she thought, as her right hand brushed furiously across her
blistering arm. In shock, she sprinted down Highway 1 behind her
older brother. She didn't see the foreign journalists gathered as
she ran toward them, screaming. Then, she lost consciousness.
The 21-year-old photographer, Nick Ut, who took the picture, drove
Phuc to a small hospital. There, he was told the child was too far
gone to help. But he flashed his American press badge, demanded that
doctors treat the girl and left, assured that she would not be
forgotten. “I cried, when I saw her running,” said Ut, whose
older brother was killed on assignment with the AP in the southern
Mekong Delta. “If I don't help her ~ if something happened and she
died I think I'd kill myself after that.”
Back at the office in what was then U.S.-backed Saigon, he developed
his film. When he saw the image of the naked little girl emerged,
everyone feared it would be rejected because of the news agency's
strict policy against nudity. But veteran Vietnam photo editor,
Horst Fass took one look and knew it was a shot to 'break the
rules'...arguing the photo's news value far outweighed other
concerns.
A couple of days after the image shocked the world, another
journalist found out the little girl had somehow survived the attack.
Christopher Wain, a correspondent for the British Independent
Television Network who gave Phuc water from his canteen and drizzled
it down her burning back, fought to have her transferred to the
American run Barsky unit which was the only facility in Saigon
equipped to deal with her severe injuries “I had no idea where I
was or what happened to me,” she said. “I woke up and I was in
the hospital with so much pain, and then the nurses were around
me...waking up with a terrible fear.” Thirty percent of Phuc's
tiny body was scorched by third-degree burns, though her face
somehow remained untouched. Over time, her melted flesh began to
heal.
“Every
morning at 8 o'clock, the nurses put me in a burn bath to cut off all
my dead skin. I just cried and cried and when I could not stand it
any longer...I passed out”. After multiple skin grafts and
surgeries, Phuc was finally allowed to leave, 13 months after the
bombing. She had seen Ut's photo, which by then had won the Pulitzer
Prize, but she was still unaware of its reach and power. She just
wanted to go home and be a child again.
For a while, life did go somewhat back to normal. The photo was
famous, but Phuc largely remained unknown except to those living in
her tiny village near the Cambodian border. Ut and a few other
journalists visited her, but that stopped after the northern
communist forces seized control of South Vietnam on April 30, 1975,
ending the war.
Life under the new regime became tough. Medical treatment and
painkillers were expensive and hard to find for the teenager, who
still suffered extreme headaches and pain. She worked hard and was
accepted into medical school to pursue her dream of becoming a
doctor. But all that ended once the new communist leaders realized
the propaganda value of the 'napalm-burned girl' in the photo. She
was forced to quit college and return to her home province, where she
was trotted out to meet foreign journalists. The visits were
monitored and controlled, her words scripted. She smiled and played
her 'role' as dictated, but the rage inside began to build and
consume her.
“I
wanted to escape that picture,” she said. “ I got burned by
napalm, and became a victim of war...but growing up then, I became
another kind of victim.” She turned to Cao Dai, her Vietnamese
religion for answers, but they didn't come. “My heart was exactly
like a black coffee...I wished I died in that attack so I wouldn't
suffer like that anymore. It was hard for me to carry all that burden
with that hatred, with that anger and with that bitterness.” One
day while visiting a library, Phuc found a Bible. For the first
time, she started believing her life had a plan. Believing this, she
turned to Christianity.
Then suddenly, once again, the photo that had given her unwanted fame
brought opportunity. She travelled 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. She was finally free from the minders and
reporters hounding her at home, but her life was far from normal.
Nick Ut, working at the AP in Los Angeles, travelled to meet her in
1989, but they never had a moment
alone. There was no way for him to know she desperately wanted his
help again. “I knew in my dream that one day 'Uncle Ut' could help
me to have freedom,” said Phuc, referring to him by an affectionate
Vietnamese term. “But I was in Cuba. I was really disappointed
because I could not contact him.”
While
at school, Phuc met a young Vietnamese man. She had never believed
anyone would ever want her because of the ugly patchwork of scars
that banded across her back and pitted her arm. But, Bui Huy Toan
seemed to love her more because of them. The two decided to marry in
1992 and honeymooned in Moscow. On the flight back to Cuba, the
newlyweds defected during a refueling stop in Gander,
Newfoundland...they left the plane and asked for 'political asylum'
in Canada, which was granted. The
couple now lives in Ajax, Ontario near Toronto and have two children.
The following year, she passed the Canadian Citizenship Test with a
perfect score and became a Canadian citizen!
Phuc
contacted Ut so share the news and he encouraged her to tell her
story to the world. But she was done giving interviews and posing
for photos, wanting to “live a normal life like everyone else
here,” she said. Her biography...The
Girl in the Picture...written
bu Denise Chong was published in 1999 and a documentary came
out...at last the way she wanted it told. She was asked to become a
United Nations' Ambassador to help victims of war. She and Ut have
since reunited many times to tell their story,
even travelling to London to meet Queen Elizabeth.
Kim
Phuc Foundation:
IN
1997 she established the first 'Kim Phuc Foundation in the US with
the aim of providing medical and psychological assistance to child
victims. Later, other foundations were set up, with the same name,
under an umbrella organization...'Kim Phuc Foundation International'.
Recognition:
In 1996
Phuc gave a speech at the United States Vietnam Memorial on Veterans'
Day. She stated that
'one cannot change the past, but everyone can work together for a
peaceful future'.
In
2004
Kim Phuc was awarded an honourary Doctorate of Law from York
University in Toronto, Ontario. She was awarded the 'Order of
Ontario' . In 2005 and 2011 she was awarded other honourary degrees
from Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario and from the University
of Lethbridge, Alberta.
“Today,
I'm so happy I helped Kim,” said Nick Ut, who still works for AP
and recently returned to Tran Bang Village. “I call her my
daughter.”
After four decades, Kim Phuc, can finally look at a picture of
herself,
running naked and understand why it remains so powerful.
It had saved her, tested
her and freed her.
“Forgiveness
made me free from hatred.
I still have many scars on my body, severe pain most days but
my heart is cleansed. Napalm is very powerful, but faith, forgiveness
and love are much more powerful. We would not have war if everyone could learn to live with true love, hope and forgiveness. If that
little girl in the picture can do it, ask yourself, Can You?` (by Kim Phuc)
Lest We Forget!
True Life Story Compiled by Merle Baird-Kerr...September 6. 2015
Comments are appreciated: email to:
