'Napalm Girl' at center of iconic Vietnam War photograph undergoes her FINAL skin treatment 50 years later

[SBFNews]

'Napalm Girl' at center of iconic Vietnam War photograph undergoes her FINAL skin treatment 50 years later at Miami clinic

• Kim Phuc Phan Ti, now 59, was nine years old when she was photographed immediately after being hit by a napalm attack in southern Vietnam
• Phan Ti miraculously survived the third degree burns which covered most of her body, but was plagued throughout her life by excruciating pain
• After fleeing communist Vietnam in 1992, Phan Ti and her husband settled in Canada, where she began to seek treatment from Dr. Jill Zwaibel in Miami

The Vietnamese girl seen in one of history's most iconic war photographs received her final skin treatment at a Miami clinic this week, 50 years after she was scorched by a napalm bombing.

Kim Phuc Phan Ti, now 59, was photographed by a journalist on June 8, 1972 running towards the camera and crying after the attack left her body covered in third degree burns. She was nine-years-old at the time and became commonly known as Napalm Girl.

Her injuries left her suffering debilitating pain for most of her life, leading her to seek a number skin graft procedures and treatments over the last few years to ease her suffering. She received the last of those treatments yesterday.

The journalist who photographed her in 1972, Nick Ut, 71, joined her for the procedure to take pictures, just over fifty years to the day that he took the Pulitzer Prize winning photo.

• Kim Phuc Phan Ti, now 59, was nine years old when she was photographed immediately after being hit by a napalm attack in southern Vietnam

• After fleeing communist Vietnam in 1992, Phan Ti and her husband settled in Canada, where she began to seek treatment from Dr. Jill Zwaibel in Miami

• In 2015 Phan Ti sought treatment from Dr. Jill Zwaibel in Miami to treat the excruciating pain that plagued her since the bombing in 1972

Phan Ti told CBS News that she clearly remembered playing with other children on that day in 1972, when Vietnamese soldiers began yelling at them to run.

'And I look up I saw the airplane and four bombs landing like that,' she said.

Phan Ti and others had been fleeing a North Vietnamese attack outside the village of Trảng Bàng, when the South Vietnamese air force mistook the group for NV soldiers and dropped napalm bombs on them.

Her clothes were burned off of her, and she received third degree burns all over her body.

She recalled yelling 'Too hot! Too hot!' in Vietnamese as she fled down the street from the flames.

That was when Ut snapped the photo that would go on to shock the world on the cover of the New York Times.

• The journalist who photographed her in 1972, Nick Ut, 71, (left) joined her for the procedure to take pictures, just over fifty years to the day that he took the Pulitzer Prize winning photo

• Phan Ti recalled yelling 'Too hot! Too hot!' in Vietnamese as she fled down the street from the flames

• Nick Ut and Kim Phuc Phan Ti at photo exhibition in Milan, Italy, in 2022. The two have remained friends since the napalm bombing in Vietnam

After taking the photo, Ut and several journalists on the scene whisked Phan Ti and a number of other children wounded in the attack away to a hospital in nearby Saigon.

There, doctors told him that the scalded girl didn't stand a chance.

'Even the doctor said she will die, no way she still alive,' Ut told CBS, 'I tell them three time and they said no, then I hold my media pass and I said, 'If she dies, my picture on every front page on every newspaper.' And they worry when I say that and took her right away inside.'

But Phan Ti held on, and after over a year in the hospital and nearly 20 surgeries she was released, but it would be nearly ten years and several more surgeries before she could properly move again.

Even then, excruciating pain - exacerbated by moving in certain ways - persisted for years and nearly drove her to suicide.

Before moving to the West, Kim wanted to become a doctor and studied medicine at a university in Vietnam.

She was seen as a 'national symbol of war' and was supervised daily, used in propaganda films and subjected to constant interviews as an example of the barbarism of the West and anti-Communist ideology.

Then, the regime decided to send her on a worldwide trip from Havana to Moscow as part of a global propaganda push.

During a layover in Canada, she and her husband Bui Huy Toan, a fellow Vietnamese student she met in Cuba, decided to seek asylum and later citizenship, and they had two children in Toronto.

• The attack that day killed two of Kim's cousins and two other villagers, and she would stay in hospital for 14 months, undergoing 17 surgical procedures including skin transplants

• The napalm had been dropped by US-backed South Vietnam accidentally against its own forces and civilians, shedding Kim's clothes as she desperately ran for help

She also kept up a friendship with photographer Ut, who she credits with saving her life and speaks on the phone with him every week. She calls him 'Uncle Ut' and he thinks of her as a daughter.

Kim wrote in the New York Times: 'Yet I also remember hating him at times. I grew up detesting that photo. I thought to myself, "I am a little girl. I am naked. Why did he take that picture? Why didn't my parents protect me? Why did he print that photo? Why was I the only kid naked while my brothers and cousins in the photo had their clothes on?" I felt ugly and ashamed.'

The napalm had been dropped by US-backed South Vietnam accidentally against its own forces and civilians, shedding Kim's clothes as she desperately ran for help, screaming 'too hot, too hot'.

It killed two of Kim's cousins and two other villagers, and she would stay in hospital for 14 months, undergoing 17 surgical procedures including skin transplants.

In 2015 she sought treatment for the pain from Dr. Jill Zwaibel in Miami. Knowing Phan Ti's story, Zwaibel agreed to perform treatments free of charge.

'Now 50 years later, I am no longer a victim of war, I am not the Napalm girl,' Phan Ti said, 'Now I am a friend, am a helper, I'm a grandmother and now I am a survivor calling out for peace.'

• Phan Ti and Ut viewing the original negatives of the photos from the 1972 napalm bombing

• Ut's photo would shock the world on the front page of The New York Times, and earn a Pulitzer Prize

Source:https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...goes-FINAL-skin-treatment-50-years-later.html

 

[SBFNews]

The Controversial History of Napalm and Its Use in War
www.warhistoryonline.com

The use of fire in warfare is horrific and terrifying. It’s also nothing new. The ancient Greeks used petroleum-based fire weapons, referred to as “sticky fire,” while the US used a similar weapon during World War II. Japanese control of the world’s rubber supply, however, forced chemists to get creative with future chemical weapons – the result was napalm.

The development of napalm​

Around the time of the Second World War, Japan took control of Malay, Vietnam, Indonesia and Thailand, all of which were responsible for the lion’s share of the world’s rubber production.

Synthetic napalm was first developed by a Harvard University team led by Louis Fieser. As author Sven Lindqvist noted, “The production of napalm was first entrusted to Nuodex Products, and by the middle of April 1942 they had developed a brown, dry powder that was not sticky by itself, but when mixed with gasoline turned into an extremely sticky and flammable substance.”

One of Fieser’s colleagues later suggested adding phosphorus to the concoction, which increased the “ability to penetrate deeply… into the musculature, where it would continue to burn day after day.”

Napalm is fired via a flamethrower during the Vietnam War. (Photo Credit: US Naval War College Museum / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain)

It didn’t take long for the new invention to be tested. Fieser worked with the US Chemical Warfare Service on his invention, with testing conducted at the Jefferson and Dugway proving grounds, the latter of which featured structures built to mimic those found in Japanese and German towns.

. By the end, the chemical had the following features:

• It burned between 1,470 and 2,190 degrees Fahrenheit. (In contrast, gasoline burns at 495 degrees.)
• It burned longer than gasoline
• It was easily dispersed and stuck, with fury, to anything it hit

Napalm is used in World War II, Korea and Vietnam​

It wasn’t long after it was developed that napalm was being used overseas. In WWII, planes dropped napalm bombs from the air to support troops on the ground, and could also be deployed from flamethrowers. The weapon was often used when the opposition was deeply dug into their position.

The first strategic use of napalm was during an attack on Berlin by the US Army Air Forces in March 1944, and its use continued into the Pacific Theater. The Allies used it during bombings of Japanese tunnels, bunkers and pillboxes.

Napalm bomb explosion during the Korean War. (Photo Credit: USN / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain)

The Korean War saw napalm used regularly. US troops on the ground were regularly outnumbered by the opposing forces, but were in control of the skies. Napalm B was used from the air to make up for the deficiencies on the ground, with its most notable use being during the “Outpost Harry” battle in June 1953.

The US was criticized for using such a horrific weapon in the theater of war. Among those critiquing its use was British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who called napalm “very cruel” and accused the US of “torturing great masses of people.”

The US, again, heavily used napalm during the Vietnam War. This time around, there were multiple reasons behind the tactic. Not only was the weapon effective – napalm dropped from low-flying aircraft can cover up to 2,500 square yards – there was also a psychological use, as well. The concept of being burned alive is terrifying and the US counted on this fear over the course of the conflict.

It’s estimated 388,000 tons of napalm was dropped on Vietnam between 1963-73, targeting not just troops and tanks, but the jungles and railroad tunnels in which the Viet Cong hid.

Napalm bomb exploding over Viet Cong structures during the Vietnam War. (Photo Credit: U.S. Air Force / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain)

America weren’t the only country to use napalm in battle. The French also utilized it during the First Indochina War in the late 1940s and early 1950s. It was also deployed by the Rhodesian Air Force during the country’s bush war, and saw use by other forces during such conflicts as the Algerian War, the Six-Day War, and the Portuguese Colonial War, among others.

Continued criticism of the use of napalm​

In 1972, a famous photo was released of a nine-year-old Vietnamese girl named Phan Thị Kim Phúc, who’d been burned by napalm. She was initially expected to die from her wounds, but survived and later became an activist for children who are the victims of war.

Nicholas Ut took the photograph and later won the Pulitzer Prize for his work.

Phan Thị Kim Phúc, burned in a napalm explosion, later became an activist. (Photo Credit: Michael Brennan / Getty Images)

The photo offered the general public the first real glimpse at the devastating effects of napalm. President Richard Nixon claimed the scene had been a set-up, to which Ut said:

“Even though it has become one of the most memorable images of the twentieth century, President Nixon once doubted the authenticity of my photograph when he saw it in the papers on 12 June 1972… The picture for me and unquestionably for many others could not have been more real. The photo was as authentic as the Vietnam War itself.

“The horror of the Vietnam War recorded by me did not have to be fixed. That terrified little girl is still alive today and has become an eloquent testimony to the authenticity of that photo. That moment thirty years ago will be one Kim Phúc and I will never forget. It has ultimately changed both our lives.”

While its use remains controversial, napalm is not banned​

The use of napalm is heavily discouraged, but not outlawed for use against military targets. It is, however, banned for use against civilian populations by the United Nations’ Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons.

Napalm bomb on display at the Swiss Air Force Museum. (Photo Credit: Ank Kumar / Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 4.0)

While the use of the weapon is uncommon these days, there are still reports of it being employed. In 2018, Turkey was accused of using napalm against Kurdish forces, but the country’s government denied this.

 

[countryman]

Same facial shape as Jack Ma...