Tears streamed down Kim Phuc Phan Thi’s cheeks last month as she stood at the door of a plane that was to bring Ukrainians to Canada.
The plane’s cabin was adorned with a famous black-and-white photo of Mrs. Phan Thi, at the age of nine — an image that has made her known ever since as “the little girl with the napalm”. In this infamous photo, we see the little girl, naked, in tears on a road, fleeing an attack of firebombs during the Vietnam War.
Fifty years after this photo was taken, Ms. Phan Thi felt the need to help Ukrainians escape war at home to find refuge in Canada, as she did decades ago.
“I fully understand their needs,” she explained in an interview from her home in Ajax, Ontario. I am so grateful to be alive and to be there for them, to offer them hope. »
Ms Phan Thi, who founded an organization to help war-affected children years ago, is currently working to support new arrivals from Ukraine and hopes to make more flights similar to the one she took last month .
She first became involved with the initiative after receiving an email from a social justice organization requesting permission to use the famous photo on their plane’s cabin. Enrique Pineyro, pilot and founder of the organization Solidaire, then planned to fly this plane from Warsaw to Regina with more than 200 Ukrainians on board.
Ms Phan Thi, 59, said she had given permission for her photo to be used and asked if she could go on the trip, a request Mr Pineyro quickly granted. But this trip required careful planning to ensure that Ms Phan Thi would be able to travel.
She had received laser treatments in Miami to repair some of the skin damage she had suffered from napalm, a jelly-like gasoline that explodes and ignites easily on impact with a target. Her twelfth laser treatment was scheduled just days before she flew to Warsaw. “I had to ask my doctor to reduce the intensity of the treatment, because otherwise I would have had to stay at home for two months. »
And she maintains today that this change in treatment was worth it, in order to be able to experience this privileged moment of welcoming 236 Ukrainians on the plane. “I stayed right next to my photo on the big plane, at the top of the stairs. And when they came up, I was there at the door to greet them,” she recalls.
“I said to myself then: 50 years ago, I was in the wrong place at the wrong time, but here I am in the right place at the right time, to offer hope to these people. »
“There were flames everywhere”
Ms Phan Thi, who still suffers from burns sustained the day of the napalm attack in 1972, has vivid memories of what was captured in the famous photo. That day, she was playing outside, near an air-raid shelter, with other children after dinner, when a soldier suddenly shouted at them to run.
“I saw the plane, it was so fast, so close and so loud,” she recalls. I just stayed there. I was a kid, I should run, right? But I did not do it. I just stood there. Then I turned my head, I saw the plane. And then I saw four bombs fall. »
Several “booms” thundered in the sky and flames sprang up, she says today. “There were flames all around me. And of course, my clothes all burned. And I saw the fire above my arm,” she said, recalling burning her right hand after trying to remove the napalm on her left arm.
“And then when I came out of those flames, I saw my brothers, two of them older and younger, and I saw my two cousins, and then some South Vietnamese soldiers. Then we kept running, running, running. »
At one point, tired, she shouted, “Too hot! Too hot ! and a soldier gave him water to drink. “He tried to help me, he poured water on me. I lost consciousness. I don’t remember anything else. »
Her relationship to this Pulitzer Prize-winning photo, taken by Associated Press photographer Nick Ut, has changed over the years. As a young child, she hated this image; young woman, she resented all the publicity it imposed on her. But her opinion changed after she moved to Canada in 1992 and became a mother.
“I never (wanted) my baby to suffer like this little girl, like me when I was a child, she explained. This photo really had a big impact on my life, and I consider it a powerful gift to me: to do something while I’m still alive. »
Appointed a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador, Ms. Phan Thi has traveled the world for years giving talks and sharing her story. She also set up an international foundation to support war-affected children.
Since the pandemic hit, she has also been caring for her aging mother, who suffers from dementia, and has been trying to help her brother in Vietnam obtain a visa to visit Canada, in order to fulfill her mother’s wish to visit him. see again.
With the arrival of Ukrainians to Canada, Ms. Phan Thi hopes to do more to support newcomers, sharing lessons learned over the years. “I learned to live with love, with hope and forgiveness,” she says. We must work for peace. »