ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, November 12, 1996 TAG: 9611120100
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-6 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: HARRY F. ROSENTHAL THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
A PHOTO OF HER BECAME an emblem of suffering in Vietnam. Monday, she talked to American veterans about hope and peace. Nearly a quarter-century after a photo of her running naked and terrified from a napalm attack was seared into Americans' consciousness, a grown-up Phan Thi Kim Phuc placed a wreath Monday at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
``I have suffered a lot from my physical and emotional pain,'' she told a hushed crowd of veterans and their families. ``Sometimes I thought I could not live, but God saved my life and gave me faith and hope.''
Kim Phuc was 9 years old when she was photographed fleeing a napalm attack in Vietnam. Associated Press photographer Nick Ut, who took the picture, won the Pulitzer Prize.
On June 8, 1972, Kim Phuc's village of Trang Bang came under a fierce aerial attack from South Vietnamese bombers. The village, 25 miles west of Saigon, had been infiltrated by the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese.
Her family had taken refuge in a Buddhist pagoda, which took a direct hit. Two of her brothers died instantly. The jellied gasoline burned the clothes off her body and she ran out of the pagoda with her brother, Phan The Negoc, screaming with pain and fright. He is the one in the left foreground of the famous picture.
``If I could talk face to face with the pilot who dropped the bomb, I would tell him we cannot change history but we should try to do things for the present and for the future to promote peace,'' Kim Phuc said Monday.
Jan Scruggs, who started the fund to erect the Vietnam memorial, introduced the woman, who now is married, has a child and lives in Toronto.
His voice broke as he described how Kim's suffering began ``when an American commander ordered South Vietnamese planes'' to drop the napalm, which was supplied by a U.S. chemical company.
``Napalm is a very terrible weapon,'' Scruggs said. ``It burns through the skin down to the bone.'' Kim has had years of skin grafts and still suffers aftereffects.
The Vietnamese summoned her in 1984 to Ho Chi Minh City to be used in propaganda films. She went to Cuba in 1986, to study pharmacology, Scruggs said. There she met her husband, Huy Toan, and Moscow summoned them there for their honeymoon. On the way back, their jet stopped for fuel in Canada and they ran from the airport and sought asylum.
According to Scruggs, the first person she telephoned was Ut, the photographer.
Kim told the audience she never thought she could marry or have children because of her burns, ``but now I have wonderful husband, a lovely child and a happy family, thank God.''
She said she only wants people to remember the tragedy of war ``to do things to stop fighting and killing around the world.''
Almost everyone in the audience facing the Vietnam wall, with its 58,000-plus names of fallen servicemen and women, wore some reminder of the war - be it a camouflage jacket, or a veterans organization hat, or simply a white flower with a handwritten legend, ``Vietnam.''
LENGTH: Medium: 70 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP. 1. Phan Thi Kim Phuc views a picture of herself andby CNBher son during a recent exhibit in Los Angeles. She said Monday,
``Sometimes I thought I could not live, but God saved my life and
gave me faith and hope.'' 2. Phan Thi Kim Phuc wipes her eyes after
placing a wreath Monday at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. color. 3.
1972/file. Kim Phuc was 9 when her pain and terror were captured in
this Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph. In the left foreground is
Phan The Negoc, her brother. The napalm killed two other brothers.