Nick Út took “napalm girl” photo - June 8, 1972

On this day in 1972, photographer Nick Út took the Pulitzer Prize-winning image that became known as the "napalm girl" photo.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This Day in History Class is a production of I
Heart Radio. Hello, Hello, everyone, Welcome to This Day in
History Class, where we bring you a new tidbit from
history every day. Today is June eighth, nineteen. The day

(00:23):
was Dune eighth, nineteen seventy two. The Vietnam War, a
particularly deadly conflict, had been going on for nearly two decades.
Associated Press photographer Nick Boot was outside of Chong Bong,
a village in southeast Vietnam, when a South Vietnamese aircraft
dropped his payload of napalm. Boot took photos of the scene.

(00:48):
One of those photos became known as the Napalm Girl
photo of black and white picture of a young girl
named Fonti Kim Fuk running naked as other children ran
alongside her. In South Vietnamese forces followed. The horrifying picture
became a symbol of the brutality of the war, and
it got Nick Oot a Pulitzer prize. Nick Oot was

(01:11):
born in Vietnam in nineteen fifty one. After his older brother,
who was an Associated Press photographer, died in Vietnam, Oot
began to take photos for the a p at age sixteen,
Out was covering the Vietnam war for the ap when
he captured the photo. Near Chang Bong, a South Vietnamese

(01:31):
Air Force pilot flying a propeller driven American made A
one skywriter carried out the napalm bombing at Chang Bong.
The point of the attack was to get North Vietnamese
units out of their positions at Chong Bong. As witnessed
the aftermath of the attack, he took photos. He used
the Lika M two camera with a thirty five millimeter

(01:53):
Sumicron Lands TV cameraman Alan Downs had also caught footage
of Kim Fuch and the other children running down the
road away from the napalm attack. At the time it
took the photo, called the Terror of War, Kim Fuch
was nine years old. Kim Fuke is just left of
center in the photo, her mouth open in a yell

(02:15):
and her arms outstretched as she runs towards the camera.
The children that surround her are clothed and the South
Vietnamese forces walk behind them as a plume of smoke
rises in the background. The fire caused by the bombs
had burned off Kim Fuch's clothes and burned her skin.
A correspondent gave her water and poured some on her burns.

(02:38):
When realized that Kim Fuch had been burned, he took
her to a hospital in Saigone doctor said she might
not survive her third degree burns, and she was sent
to a specialist plastic surgery center. She received many surgical
procedures for her injuries and survived, though some of her
family members died. An editor at the AP rejected the

(03:00):
photo because it showed full frontal nudity. Back then, photos
that included nudity were off limits. Horse Foss, head of
the Saigon photo department, said that they should make an
exception to publish the photo under the condition that no
close ups of Kim Fuk would be permitted. Help Buel,
the New York photo editor, also believed the photo was

(03:23):
worth sharing despite the nudity, so the AP transmitted the photo.
Many news rooms had to disregard their own policies of
nudity depiction in photographs to publish the image. White House
recordings that were later released showed that then President Richard
Nixon in Chief of Staff H. R. Haldeman, wondered whether
the photo was authentic or actually staged. At the time

(03:45):
the photo was published, anti war sentiment had already been
escalating in the United States, so the photo did not
really contribute as much to such feelings among Americans as
some media sources have stated. It's also a myth, as
some sources have not it that the photo helped in
the war, which came to a close in nineteen seventy five.

(04:05):
In nineteen seventy three, the United States pulled out of
the Vietnam War. That same year, Oot won the Pulitzerprise
for Spot News Photography and the World Press Photo of
the Year for that image. Oot and kim Fuch stayed
in touch over the years. Nick Oot retired in t seventeen.
Kim Fuch went on to help victims of war around

(04:27):
the world. I'm Eve Jeff Ko and hopefully you know
a little more about history today than you did yesterday.
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(04:50):
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(05:17):
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