Five years ago, he finally could feel the touch of a hand on his skin.
With the burn scars removed, the 50-year-old "napalm girl" could feel the caress of a grandchild.
Today Kim Phuc Phan Thi is "proud" to have become "a symbol of peace", but for long, painful years she hated that shot that made her famous all over the world, helping to end the Vietnam War .
Kim Phuc lives in Toronto.
She was nine years old when on June 8, 1972 the Associated Press photographer Nick Ut immortalized her in Trang Bang as she, terrified and naked, fled from the incendiary bombs dropped from a South Vietnamese plane.
"I only have flashes of memories of that terrible day. I was playing with cousins in the temple courtyard. A plane flew over our heads.
A deafening noise.
Then the explosions, the smoke and excruciating pain ".
Kim Phuc, who recently met Pope Francis, writes today in the 'New York Times' that "napalm sticks to you no matter how hard you run, causing horrendous burns and pain that lasts a lifetime."
Today a 59-year-old woman the napalm girl does not remember screaming "Nóng quá, nóng quá!"
("Too hot, too hot"), but there are pictures and memories of others that show she did.
Among these Nick Ut, who not only photographed her, saved her life.
"A single photo can change the world. I know because I took one", wrote the photographer today in the "Washington Post", aware that for many that image of the naked girl with her arms raised to the sky, beyond to make him win a Pulitzer, he contributed to the end of the war: "I don't know if that's true, but I do know that he described the absolute horror of war, defined by a girl running naked in the midst of destruction and death".
The same horror that the
Ukraine and the massacre of the Uvalde school evoke the former "napalm girl" to whom the arsonist agenda caused fourth degree burns by cooking the meat and muscles and fusing them with the bones.
For years Kim had resigned herself to living in her pain until a course of advanced therapies at a Miami hospital gave her back her life.
Today the "napalm girl" has a foundation and she travels around the world to war-torn countries to offer medical and psychological assistance to children who are victims of the conflict.
"I know what it means to see your village bombed, your home devastated, family members dying, bodies of innocent civilians on the streets. The horrors of the Vietnam War are sadly those of other wars. Today in Ukraine",
Kim said, also thinking about the horrifying images of school shootings.
In her opinion, unbearable as it may be, those photos should be shown, even if they are of children: "These attacks are the equivalent of a war. It is easier to hide the realities if the consequences are not seen".
(HANDLE).