Vietnam's 'Napalm Girl'

Witness History

BBC

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.4 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 14 June 2022

⏱️ 10 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

It’s 50 years since Kim Phuc's village in Vietnam was bombed with napalm. The photograph of her, running burned and crying away from the attack, became one of the iconic images of the Vietnam War. Christopher Wain was one of the journalists who witnessed the attack, and who helped save her. This programme brings Kim Phuc and Christopher Wain together in conversation. It is a Made in Manchester production. Photo: Vietnamese-Canadian Phan Thi Kim Phuc delivers her speech before her June 8, 1972 Pulitzer-Prize-winning photograph during the Vietnam war, during a lecture meeting in Nagoya, Aichi prefecture on April 13, 2013. Credit: AFP/Getty Images.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Anyone that helps people who are accused of sorcery are also blamed for being sorcerers.
0:05.7	Lives less ordinary from the BBC World Service. Real people with extraordinary stories.
0:11.9	I started having a strength in me. I have to stand up for other women.
0:16.8	Find out more at the end of this podcast.
0:25.2	Hello and thank you for downloading the Witness History podcast
0:28.5	from the BBC World Service. 50 years ago on June 8, 1972,
0:34.7	Kim Fuchs Village in Vietnam was bombed with napalm.
0:38.7	A famous photograph was taken of the little girl running away from the attack.
0:43.0	Her arms were outstretched and she was screaming.
0:46.4	ITN journalist Christopher Wayne helped her. This is their story, first broadcast in 2010.
0:53.7	That morning we'd been heading for the Cambodian border. To a village I'd never heard of
0:58.4	called Trang Bang. It had been infiltrated by the North Vietnamese two days earlier
1:04.1	and they were dug in awaiting a counterattack.
1:08.0	Many of the villages had fled to the shelter of a temple and among them was a nine-year-old
1:13.6	called Kim Fuchs. We decided in a temple because the temple is a holy place.
1:19.8	It is we thought it's a safe place so all of us move into the temple.
1:25.6	In the late morning two vintage Vietnamese Air Force Sky Raider bombers started to circle
1:30.6	overhead but this wasn't anything unusual. Air strikes were so common place in Vietnam
1:35.9	that news crews rarely bothered to film them. We heard the noise of burning tree
1:42.6	house around a temple. Then the soldiers shouted to us, we had to run and we didn't know anything.
1:55.1	What happened? But they saw something that they dropped the collar mark.
2:03.2	That means they dedicated the temple was going to be bombed. Yes.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.