The story of Kim Phuc’s life is one of resurrection. At the age of nine, she was caught in a napalm attack near her home in Trang Bang, in southeast Vietnam. As she fled with her skin burning from the sticky chemical, her mouth open in a scream, a photographer took a picture. It became an iconic image of the Vietnam War.
Today, Phuc travels the world speaking about forgiveness and peace. She is an UNESCO goodwill ambassador, a committed Christian, and was one of the keynote speakers at the national Presbyterian Women’s Gathering in May.
“I simply share my story, seeking peace, working for peace,” she tells the Record. Phuc is elegant and soft – spoken, with a beautiful smile. Her iconic picture is a “symbol of war,” she says. “But now my life is a symbol of love, hope and forgiveness.”
“I am always thankful to the Lord that, number one, He gave me another chance to live. I was supposed to be dead, you know. I look back, I never thought, how can I [have] survived? It’s incredible. It’s unbelievable.”
Napalm can burn at 800 to 1,200 degrees Celsius, and a third of people who take a direct hit of burning napalm die within half an hour. At least third degree burns covered more than 30 per cent of the surface of Phuc’s body. Nick Ut, the photojournalist who took the famous picture that morning, June 8, 1972, rushed the little girl to a hospital in Cu Chi; she was soon sent to another hospital in Saigon. There the doctors decided her burns were too extensive; she was moved to an outbuilding where she was left to die.
“Even after I became Christian,” Phuc says, “the idea, the question in my mind followed me for many years: Why [did] they put me in the morgue? I [had] not died yet.”
She says she discovered the answer unexpectedly while at a conference in Spain. She struck up a conversation with a scientist who said the three days she lay in the morgue saved her life. By not removing her bandages to treat her at the second hospital, the doctors starved the napalm of oxygen, she says. If they had removed the bandages from her fresh wounds, the napalm could have continued to burn.
“You see, three days in the morgue saved my life,” she says. “I say praise the Lord. It’s a miracle. You never know.”
Kim Phuc has spent much of her life telling her story. Today she does so voluntarily, but when she was a young woman in Vietnam, the Communist government made use of her celebrity by requiring her to do interviews with foreign journalists. The seemingly endless interviews interfered with her studies and she was pulled from her university in Ho Chi Minh City. It ended her dream of becoming a doctor.
In that dark time in her life, she read a copy of the New Testament that she found in a library, and became involved with a church. She eventually converted from her family’s faith, Caodaism, to Christianity.
She went on to study in Cuba, where she met her husband. And on their way back from a honeymoon in Moscow, they slipped away from the other passengers when their plane stopped to refuel in Newfoundland. They claimed asylum in Canada. Today they live in Ajax, Ont.
“You know the Lord has a plan for everyone,” she says. “He had a plan for that little girl. He helped me not only survive but He gave me opportunity, open mind to learn what happened to me, and then accept it and move on with a thankful heart. … For a while I got a lot of pain. Hate is full in my heart. But because of that I have the choice to choose. And I decided to choose the right choice; God helped me and that made me who I am now. Yes, I was a victim of war. I was a victim of different kinds of people everywhere. But in Jesus He gave me victory. And that is so beautiful and that, of course, no doubt about that, is my choice.”
Kim Phuc still lives with the pain of her injuries. Scars adorn her left arm and back. But, she says, after struggling with anger, hatred and bitterness for many years, she learned to “use the past to learn the lesson but move on forward to the future.” Today, she says, her body still gives her pain but “my heart is healed.”
“I look at it now not as the obstacle in my life, but that I consider those scars, those pains, it reminds me who I am and who is God. Reminds me God is always with me. I am nothing. And through Him I can do something through the rest of my life. And just simply one word: be a blessing.”
She says she hopes and prays that the people who hear her story will remember her and something that seems impossible in their own lives can be possible with God.
“God works in my life and God can work in their life, increase their faith, encourage them,” she says. “Kim can do it; I can do it, too.”
“I wish the rest of my life I don’t want to hear any more war, any more child suffer because I suffered enough. It’s not easy to deal with. … That’s why I say we need to work harder. Of course I know we can’t change the whole world, but I really appreciate every individual. … It’s not necessary who you are, which country you come from, which colour you wear, everybody needs to learn how to live with love and hope and forgiveness. If everyone can live like that, we don’t need war. That’s true. I focus on [the] individual.
And so the challenge is for everyone that if that little girl can do it, so everyone can do it, too. So that [is the] message I want to continue to press around the world. It’s your job. Everyone has a job to do.”
