Video: 'The Harrowing Story of Napalm Girl'

(Thursday, June 8, 1972, shortly after 11:30 a.m. Saigon Standard Time; during the Vietnam War, part of the Indochina Wars and the Cold War) — Associated Press photographer Nick Ut took a picture today of a screaming 9-year-old girl, Phan Thi Kim Phuc, as she ran naked and severely burned on her back after a South Vietnamese Air Force jet dropped a napalm bomb onto the village of Trang Bàng, which had been attacked and occupied by North Vietnamese forces.

Kim Phúc had joined a group of civilians and South Vietnamese soldiers who were fleeing from the Caodai Temple to the safety of South Vietnamese-held positions. The Republic of Vietnam Air Force pilot mistook the group for enemy soldiers and diverted to attack.

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The bombing killed two of Kim Phúc’s cousins and two other villagers. Kim Phúc received third-degree burns after her clothing was burned by the fire. In an interview many years later, she recalled she was yelling, Nóng quá, nóng quá (“too hot, too hot”) in the picture.

Ut’s photograph of Kim Phúc running naked amid other fleeing villagers, South Vietnamese soldiers, and press photographers became one of the most haunting images of the Vietnam War. She was forever known as the “Napalm Girl.”

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The New York Times editors were at first hesitant to consider the photo for publication because of the nudity, but eventually approved it. A cropped version of the photo—with the press photographers to the right removed—was featured on the front page of The New York Times the next day.

It later earned a Pulitzer Prize and was chosen as the World Press Photo of the Year for 1973.