Kim Phuc is best known as “the girl in the picture”, the provocative photo taken in 1972 at the height of the Vietnam war. She was nine years old then, napalm bombs were accidentally dropped on her village and she was photographed running naked, screaming and burned down a dirt road.

Napalm is very powerful but faith, forgiveness, and love are much more powerful.

On June 08, 1972 after I run out from Cao Dai temple in my village Trang Bang, South Vietnam. I saw an airplane getting lower and then four bombs falling down. I saw fire everywhere around me. Then I saw the fire over my body, especially on my left arm. My clothes had been burned off by the fire. I was 9 years old but I still remember my thoughts at that moment: I would be ugly and people would treat me in a different way. Then I was so terrified that I stopped thinking, and tried to run out of the fire screaming “too hot, too hot!”. My picture was taken in that moment on Route 1 from Saigon to Nonphen. After a soldier gave me a drink and poured water on my body, I lost my consciousness.

Several days after I realized that I was in the hospital. It was Barsky burn clinic in Saigon where I spent for 14 months and had 17 operations to repair the third-degree burns over half of my body. The nurses put me in a burn bath with special medicine to make it easier to cut my dead skin off. I just cried and when I couldn’t stand any longer, I passed out.

It was a very difficult time for me when I went home from the hospital: we lost everything our house was destroyed and we just survived day-by-day.

Although I suffered from pain, itching, and headaches all the time; the long hospital stay made me dream to become a doctor. I tried my best to get into the Medicine School in Saigon. But my studies were cut short by the local government. They wanted me as a symbol of the state. I could not go to school any more. The anger inside me about not being able to follow my dream was like a hatred as high as a mountain. I hated my life. I hated all people who were normal because I was not normal. I really wanted to die many times. It was another very low point in my young life. I spent my day time in the library to read a lot of religious books to find a purpose for my life. One of the books that I read was the Holy Bible. In Christmas 1982, I accepted Jesus Christ as my personal Savior. It was an amazing turning point in my life. God helped me to learn to forgive – the most difficult of all lessons. It didn’t happen in a day and it wasn’t easy. But I finally got it.

Forgiveness made me free from hatred. I still have many scars on my body and severe pain most days but my heart is cleansed.

Napalm is very powerful but faith, forgiveness, and love are much more powerful. We wouldn’t have war at all if everyone could learn how to live with truth love, hope and forgiveness. If that little girl in the picture can do it, ask yourself: can you? With love and peace,

For This I Believe, I’m Kim Phuc in Ajax, Ontario.