Napalm Girl' at 50: The story of the Vietnam War's defining photo

The horrifying photograph of children fleeing a deadly napalm attack has become a defining image not only of the Vietnam War but the 20th century. Dark smoke billowing behind them, the young subjects' faces are painted with a mixture of terror, pain and confusion. Soldiers from the South Vietnamese army's 25th Division follow helplessly behind.To get more news about 在线人成免费视频69国产, you can visit our official website.
Taken outside the village of Trang Bang on June 8, 1972, the picture captured the trauma and indiscriminate violence of a conflict that claimed, by some estimates, a million or more civilian lives. Though officially titled "The Terror of War," the photo is better known by the nickname given to the badly burned, naked 9-year-old at its center: "Napalm Girl".
The girl, since identified as Phan Thi Kim Phuc, ultimately survived her injuries. This was thanks, in part, to Associated Press photographer Nick Ut, who assisted the children after taking his now-iconic image. Fifty years on from that fateful day, the pair are still in regular contact -- and using their story to spread a message of peace.Her childhood village of Trang Bang, less than 30 miles northwest of Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City), had then been occupied by communist forces from the country's north. According to a New York Times report from the time, the South Vietnamese army had spent three days trying to drive them out and reopen the nearby highway. That morning, the south's air force dispatched propellor-driven Skyraider planes to drop napalm -- a substance that causes severe burns and sticks to targets -- on enemy positions.
Phuc and her family had been sheltering with other civilians and South Vietnamese soldiers in a Buddhist temple. Upon hearing their own army's aircraft overhead, the soldiers urged everyone to flee, fearing an attack. Tragically, the group was mistaken for the enemy.
"I turned my head and saw the airplanes, and I saw four bombs landing down," said Phuc. "Then, suddenly, there was the fire everywhere, and my clothes were burned up by the fire. At that moment I didn't see anybody around me, just fire.
"I still remember what I thought," she added. "I thought: 'Oh my goodness, I got burned, I will be ugly, and people will see me different way. But I was so terrified."Phuc ripped off what remained of her clothes and ran down the Route 1 highway. Vietnamese photographer Ut, who was 21 years old at the time, was among several journalists positioned outside the village anticipating further conflict that day.
"I saw Kim running and she (screamed in Vietnamese) 'Too hot! Too hot!'" he said on a video call from Los Angeles. "When I took the photo of her, I saw that her body was burned so badly, and I wanted to help her right away. I put all my camera gear down on the highway and put water on her body."
Ut then put the injured children in his van and drove them for 30 minutes to a nearby hospital. But upon arrival, the hospital told him there was no space, and that he would need to take them to Saigon."I said, 'If she goes one more hour (without treatment), she will die," he recalled, adding that he initially feared Phuc had already died in his vehicle during the drive.
Ut eventually convinced doctors to take them in by producing his press pass and telling them the children's image would be seen across the world's newspapers the next day. (Speaking to Vanity Fair in 2015, he recalled his exact words to the hospital as: "If one of them dies you'll be in trouble.")