Phan Phuc Biography

Born c.1963
Trang Bang, South Vietnam

Vietnamese woman who appeared in a famous photograph that showed young victims of a U.S.-ordered napalm attack; became a symbol of forgiveness and healing after she laid a wreath at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in 1996

"Behind that picture of me, thousands and thousands of people, they suffered—more than me. . . . Their whole lives were destroyed, and nobody took that picture."

In 1972 a nine-year-old Vietnamese child named Phan Thi Kim Phuc was photographed running naked down a country road after suffering terrible burns from a U.S.-ordered napalm attack on her village. The photograph received a Pulitzer Prize and became one of the most enduring images of the Vietnam War's violence and cruelty. Twenty-four years later, however, Kim Phuc also became a symbol of reconciliation when she laid a wreath at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in memory of the...

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