Fifty years ago, a nine -year -old Vietnamese girl fled to her life when the US fighter jet dropped the Napalm bomb. His photo was naked and shouted into one for history. Now, at the age of 59, he has received the last skin care for the terrible burns that he experienced in the attack, in a country that fought his own.
Nicknamed ‘Napalm Girl’, Kim Phuc Phan Ti has undergone several procedures and treatments to relieve pain from the third -level burns in his body, which he suffered in Napalm strikes in his village in June 1972, during the Vietnam War.
A year living in the hospital and 17 operations later, the bad burning girl was dismissed. He had to undergo several more procedures in the next decade before he could move again. Even so, every day is suffering for him.
Phan Ti and her husband fled from Vietnam who were communist controlled in 1992 and sought asylum in Canada. In 2015, he contacted Dr. Jill Zwaibel in Miami (in the US Florida state), looking for special treatment for burns and scars. Knowing the story of Phan Ti, Dr. Zwaibel agreed to take free treatment.
Nick Ut, a journalist who won the Pulitzer prize who recorded his iconic war photos now before rushed to the hospital, joined Phan Ti in Miami for the last procedure and took more photos of him. This time, he smiled.
In an interview with CBS News, Phan Ti recounted a scary trial that changed his life: he had played with other children when the Vietnamese army told him to run.
He looked up, seeing the plane dropped the bomb, before his village caught fire. “Too hot! Too hot!” He shouted while running away. His clothes burned from him, and he received a third -level burns throughout his body.
“I still remember what I thought at that time – ‘Geez, I was burning, then I would be ugly, then people would see me in a different way,” he said.
After successfully completing his skin care procedures, Phan Ti said, “Now 50 years later, I am no longer a victim of war, I am not a napalm girl, now I am a friend, I am a helper, I am a grandmother and now I am a survivor who calls for peace. “