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The Story of the Napalm Girl and the Photographer Who Saved Her Life

The Life of Phan Thi Kim Phuc

Reginald Ben-Halliday
8 min readOct 31, 2020
June 8, 1972: Kim Phúc, center left, running down a road naked near Trảng Bàng after a South Vietnam Air Force napalm attack.

TThe picture above depicts soldiers walking behind terrified children, including a naked nine-year-old girl named Phan Thi Kim Phuc, running down a country road after a napalm attack on their village. This is a famous war photograph, taken by Nick Ut, that depicts the horrors of the Vietnam War and unveils them to the world.

The terrified girl in the photograph had to rip off her clothes after a large amount of napalm fell on her. She kept on running and yelling “Nóng quá, Nóng quá” (“too hot, too hot”) and when she got to the safety camp of the South Vietnamese Soldiers, she passed out.

The photograph won the Pulitzer Prize a year later and was chosen as the ‘World Press Photo of the Year’.

A picture of Phan Thi Kim Phuc many years later

Born on April 6, 1963, Phan Thị Kim Phúc, informally referred to as the ‘Napalm Girl’, is a South Vietnamese-born woman who later became a Canadian citizen. She appeared in the famous war photo depicted in the Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph taken during the Vietnam War.

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Reginald Ben-Halliday
Reginald Ben-Halliday

Written by Reginald Ben-Halliday

History through photos| Crimes| personal growth

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