Do You Know What Happened To The Little Girl In This Famous Photo?

Aleteia ^ | February 6, 2015

[NYer]

AFP PHOTO / JIJI PRESS

On June 8, 1972, a plane bombed the village of Trang Bang in South Vietnam, after the pilot mistook a group of civilians for enemy troops. The bombs contained Napalm, a highly flammable substance which killed and badly burned the people on the ground.




The famous black and white photo of children fleeing the burning village won the Pulitzer Prize and was chosen as the "World Press Photo of the Year" in 1972. It became the symbol of the horrors of the Vietnam war, and of every war’s cruelty to children and civilians.

The main figure in the photo is a 9-year-old girl running naked and desperate down the street after her clothes caught fire. Her name is Kim Phuc Phan Thi, and at the time she was participating with her family in a religious ceremony at a pagoda.


Recently Kim Phuc Phan Thi was interviewed on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the bombing. She said that after the photos were taken she collapsed to the ground and was rescued by photographer Nick Ut who brought her to the hospital. She was hospitalized for 14 months and underwent 17 surgeries.

I wanted to die that day, together with my family,” she said. “It was hard for me to carry all that hatred, that anger." 

Despite the deep scars left on her body, she studied medicine and in her second year of university in Saigon she discovered the New Testament in the university library. She started reading. Thereafter she committed herself to following Jesus Christ and realized that God had a plan for her life. In 1997, together with her husband who is also Vietnamese, Kim Phuc Phan Thi founded the first International Kim Foundation in the United States, with the aim of providing medical and psychological assistance to children who are victims of war. The project spread and other centers were set up.



Her conversion to Christianity has especially given her the power and strength to forgive. Today Kim Phuc Phan Thi is 50 years old. She lives near Toronto, Canada, with her husband and two sons, Thomas and Stephen. She has dedicated her life to promoting peace by providing medical and psychological support to victims of the war in Uganda, East Timor, Romania, Tajikistan, Kenya, Ghana and Afghanistan. 

"Forgiveness freed me from hatred," she wrote in her biography, entitled The Girl in the Picture. "I still have many scars on my body and severe pain on most days, but my heart is purified. Napalm is very powerful, but faith, forgiveness and love are much stronger. There would be no more war if everyone were to learn to live with true love, hope, and forgiveness.

"If the little girl in the photo could do it, ask yourself, Can I?"



 

[NYer]

Inspiring, ping!

[Responsibility2nd]

She is an awesome testimony to the power of love and forgiveness.

[colorado tanker]

VERY inspiring. Thanks for the post.

[ChicagahAl]

There would be no more war if everyone were to learn to live with true love, hope, and forgiveness.

Please teach those who wish to establish a world-wide Caliphate; to live with true love, hope, and forgiveness. Instead of living with true hatred, despair, and eternal grievance.

While you are at it; please teach these new tricks to old dogs known as Democrats.

Thank you.

[enraged]

Knew what picture it was before I clicked. I remember this from when I was a kid. Had a different intent attached to it then.

[windcliff]

ping

[stephenjohnbanker]

Great post!

BUMP

[ADSUM]

She is beautiful. In more ways than one.

God Bless her and her family.

[noah]

What a great POST!

JESUS is THE ANSWER to the world’s problems.
We need to believe and tell the good news.

This story is real good news.
LOVE is the most POWERFUL force in this world!!

[Blood of Tyrants]

Yet Obama compares Christianity to the murderous hatred of Islam.

[CivilWarBrewing]

[ansel12]

The media has always used the photo against America, but the Air Force involved in the attack was South Vietnamese, it wasn’t an American plane.

[tang-soo]

Ping for later

[NYer]

Thank you VERY MUCH for this photographic contribution to the thread. Lest we forget ...

[ransomnote]

Contrast her with the Islamists who locked school girls in a burning school so they would not commit immodesty by running from the building without being veiled.

From Wiki:
According to at least two reports, members of the Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice (CPVPV), also known as Mutaween, would not allow the girls to escape or to be saved from the fire because they were “not properly covered”, and the mutaween did not want physical contact to take place between the girls and the civil defense forces for fear of sexual enticement, and variously that the girls were locked in by the police, or forced back into the building.[2][6] Civil Defense stated that the fire had extinguished itself before they arrived on the scene. CPVPV officers did appear to object to Civil Defense workers going into the building - Human Rights Watch quoted a Civil Defense officer as saying,

“Whenever the girls got out through the main gate, these people forced them to return via another. Instead of extending a helping hand for the rescue work, they were using their hands to beat us.”

[Interesting Times]

This article implies that Kim Phuc was wounded in an American action, but that is not the case. More information can be found here.

[Gay State Conservative]

It's very gratifying to see Christianity is spreading so substantially in Asia and Africa.It's heartbreaking to see it dying so rapidly in the West.

[duckbutt]

Quite a testimony —now SHE is someone who is worthy to speak at the National Day of Prayer breakfast........

[ZULU]

Another one of thone dangerous crusading Christians Obama warned us about.