Dulce Et Decorum Est

Photograph by Nick Út, for the Associated Press (1972).

The photograph, one of the most famous press photographs of the Vietnam War, was taken near the village of Trang Bang in south Vietnam, on June 8, 1972, after South Vietnamese planes firebombed the village in an attempt to attack Vietcong guerrillas. The girl on the center-left, Phan Thị Kim Phúc, age nine, was badly burned on her back by the napalm used in the bombing. In a later interview, she said that she remembered screaming It’s hot, it’s hot in the picture.

Napalm is the name used for a family of chemicals used to produce jellied gasoline for incendiary weapons, such as firebombs and flamethrowers. The gelling effect of the napalm ensures that the compound burns at a steady rate, and continues to stick to people or things while it burns, instead of dripping off. According to WikiPedia,

In some cases, Napalm does not cause physical pain because it incapacitates and kills its victims very quickly. Those who do survive suffer third degree burns, damaging the vascular dermis, which does not have pain receptors. However, victims who suffer second degree burns from splashed napalm will be in significant amounts of pain.

Napalm is the most terrible pain you can imagine, said Kim Phuc, known from a famous Vietnam War photograph. Water boils at 100 degrees Celsius. Napalm generates temperatures of 800 to 1,200 degrees Celsius.

After taking the photograph, the photographer, Nick Út, rushed Kim Phúc to a hospital in Saigon, where it was predicted she would not survive her burns. However, she managed to survive, and returned home after a 14 month hospital stay, and 17 surgeries. She now lives in Toronto with her husband and two children. Nick Út won a Pulitzer Prize for the photograph.

Recently-released White House tapes revealed that then-President of the United States, Richard Nixon, suspected that the photograph might have been faked for the purposes of antiwar propaganda. Following the release of this tapes, Út replied:

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 June 12, 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 Phuc and I will never forget. It has ultimately changed both our lives

Program booklet for Humanist Art/Symbolic Sites: An Art Forum for the 21st Century

The photograph is copyright 1972 by Nick Út / the Associated Press, and is used here under provisions of fair use.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 21st, 2006 at 11:41 pm and is filed under Asia, Burns, Children, Firebombing, Incendiary weapons, Kim Phuc, Napalm, Nick Ut, Photography, Richard Nixon, Saigon, Trang Bang, Vietnam, Vietnam War. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.