‘I think about that picture and I cry’
Nick Ut’s iconic photo of Kim Phuc likely saved her life — 40 years later, she thanks all her heroes
They were her saviours, an unlikely and disparate group of people who stepped outside the normal requirements of their jobs to help a dying child during the Vietnam War.
The journalists, the nurse, the immigration officer and others who, in effect, gave Kim Phuc a new life came together for the first time in 40 years and were honoured on Friday in a tribute at the Fairmont Royal York. She calls them her heroes. She was the girl in the photograph, that searing, enduring image of the agony of war. She was wailing in pain — “too hot!” — her naked skin blistering from a fiery napalm attack on her village. Her arms were outstretched.
“I was an innocent child and didn’t know about war,” says Phuc, now a serene and beautiful woman of 49, mother of two teenage boys and UNESCO goodwill ambassador. She now lives in Ajax. Nick Ut, the Associated Press photographer, then only 21, took the photo that earned a Pulitzer Prize.
“I knew that picture was terrible, right away,” says Ut. His brother had also been a photographer and was killed in the war; Ut prayed he would take a photo that would help bring it to an end.
Ut covered the nine-year-old child, poured water on her and loaded her in his van to take her to hospital. He’d seen her baby brothers perish that day in the arms of their family. “I didn’t want to see her die.”
He’s gray-haired now at 61, but still smooth-faced and working for the AP. Living in Los Angeles, he’s on general assignment and often takes photos of celebrities — Paris Hilton going to jail was one of his. He calls Phuc every week. “I call him Uncle Ut,” she says, smiling. “He went another step beyond his job when he took me to hospital. I am so thankful and respectful because he is such a sweet man.”
Phuc never looks at the photograph when she is alone.
Ut, who has it on the wall in his home, looks at it every day. “I think about that picture and I cry all the time.”
His photo likely saved her life. First it made people curious about her — who was she? did she survive? — then it made them care about her and make sure she got decent care.
One of those was Perry Kretz, then a journalist for Stern, the weekly German news magazine.
He spent 10 years trying to get her out of Vietnam — finally taking her to a hospital in Germany for surgeries to ease her pain and allow her to have more movement in her neck.
“Usually, I don’t do these things,” says Kretz.
Still a tough guy at 78, he was the oldest embedded reporter in the Iraq war. “I’ve been in other wars and there were children who were hurt and injured. I couldn’t understand why I did that.”
A therapist helped him understand. Kretz had been in Saigon drinking at the back of a nightclub when it was bombed in 1971. Dozens were killed and dozens more injured. “When you come out of that, it was a second birth. I had it in the back of my mind that I wanted to do something good for Vietnam. I saw this girl. I wanted to give someone else a second life.”
“I call him papa,” says Phuc. “I am so thankful, from my heart.”
Then there’s Christopher Wain, a journalist covering the war for the British ITN news service. Wain, who had seen the napalm attack on Phuc’s village, Trang Bang, went looking for her in hospital. He found her and was told the child would die the next day. He insisted she be moved to a private, American-run, plastic-surgery hospital where she remained in critical condition for nearly six weeks.
“He shared my road,” says Phuc. “He fought to help me. I am so grateful.” The two met for the first time two years ago in Britain.
At Friday’s tribute, Phuc also met Murray Osmond, the Gander, Nfld., immigration officer who helped her when she sought asylum in Canada, and Martha Arsenault, a nurse now living in Quebec, who cared for her in Saigon. She’s now 91.
“It is a miracle,” says Phuc. “Today I have the opportunity to gather all my heroes who shared my road, to remember what happened that day. . . . They have come from all over the world — to celebrate life.”