Tears streamed down Kim Fook Phan Thi’s face as she stood at the entrance of a plane that was supposed to carry Ukrainian newcomers from Poland to Canada last month.
The plane was emblazoned with a famous black-and-white photograph of Fan Ti as a nine-year-old child – an image that made her known as “the napalm girl” – showing her naked, screaming and running from an attack during the Vietnam War.
Fifty years after that photo was taken, Phan Thi found herself drawn to help Ukrainians flee their country’s war and return to the safe haven of Canada, just as she had done decades earlier.
“I just remembered what’s going on with them now… I was there. I understand what they need,” she said in an interview from her home in Ajax, Ont.
“I’m so grateful to be alive and to be there for them, giving them hope.”
Phan Thi, who years ago founded an organization aimed at helping children affected by the war, now works to support newly arrived Ukrainians and hopes to fly on more flights like the one she was on last month.
She first became involved in the effort last month after receiving an email from a social justice organization seeking permission to use her famous photo as a child on the outside of their plane.
Enrique Pinheiro, pilot and founder of the Solidaire organization, plans to fly this plane from Warsaw to Regina with more than 200 Ukrainians on board.
“I said, ‘Wow, this is so wonderful.’ We can work together,” Fan Ti said. “Because that’s the impact of my picture, even 50 years (later), right?”
Fan Ti, 59, said she had given permission for her photo to be used and asked if she could join the trip, a request Pinheiro quickly agreed to.
However, the trip required careful planning to ensure that Phan Thi would be able to travel.
She underwent laser treatment in Miami to repair some of the skin damage she suffered from napalm, a gel-like substance that easily explodes and ignites on impact with a target. Her 12th laser round was scheduled just days before she had to leave for Warsaw.
“I had to ask my doctor, ‘Don’t do (the treatment) so hard,'” said Fan Ti, who was eager to speed up the healing time. “Because if she treated me too deep or too hard, I’d have to be home for two months.”
Phan Thi said the change in treatment was worth it for the experience of welcoming the 236 Ukrainians who came aboard.
“I just stood side by side with my photo in the big plane. And they came up the stairs and I was there at the door greeting them,” she recalled.
“I just thought at (that) moment, yeah, 50 years ago I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. But right now I’m at the right time and the right place to be there to give those people hope.”
Fan Ti, who is still in pain from the burns she suffered on the day of the napalm attack in 1972, has vivid memories of what was captured in the famous photo.
She was playing outside near a bomb shelter with other children after lunch when suddenly a soldier shouted for them to run.
“I saw the plane, it was so fast, so close and so loud,” she said.
“I just stayed there. I was a kid, I had to run, right? But I didn’t. I was just standing right there. Then I turned my head, saw the plane. And then I saw four bombs landing. “
A series of booms boomed overhead and flames erupted, she recalled.
“The fire was all around me. And of course my clothes were on fire. And I saw the fire over my hand,” she said, recalling how she burned her right hand after trying to wipe the napalm off her left hand.
“Then when I (came) out of that fire, I saw my brothers, two of them older and younger. Then I saw my two cousins, then some South Vietnamese soldiers. Then we just kept running and running and running.’
At one point she got tired and cried, “Too hot! She remembers that a soldier gave her water to drink.
“He tried to help me, doused me with water,” she said. “I passed out. I didn’t remember anything else.”
Her relationship with the Pulitzer Prize-winning photo taken by Associated Press photographer Nick Utt has changed over the years. As a young child, Phan Thi said, she hated the image, and as a young woman she resented the publicity it threw at her.
But her opinion changed after she moved to Canada in 1992 and became a mother.
“I never (wanted) my baby to suffer like that little girl, like I did when I was a child,” she said. “This photo really had a big impact on my life and I consider it a powerful gift for me to do something while I’m still alive.”
Phan Thi is a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador and has spent years traveling the world giving lectures and sharing her story. She also founded the Kim Foundation International to help children affected by war.
After the pandemic hit, she split her time between caring for her aging mother, who has dementia, and trying to help her brother in Vietnam get a visa to visit Canada to fulfill her mother’s wish to see him.
With the arrival of Ukrainians in Canada, Phan Thi hopes to do more to support the newcomers by sharing the lessons she has learned over the years.
“I learned how to live with love, with hope and forgiveness,” she said. “We must work for peace.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published on August 3, 2022.
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