{"id":23633,"date":"2019-04-25T17:18:11","date_gmt":"2019-04-25T21:18:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=23633"},"modified":"2019-05-02T12:15:53","modified_gmt":"2019-05-02T16:15:53","slug":"that-little-girl-isnt-running-anymore-shes-flying","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/that-little-girl-isnt-running-anymore-shes-flying\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cThat little girl isn\u2019t running anymore, she\u2019s flying\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kim Phuc was just nine years old when a napalm bomb fell\non her village in 1972.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The clothes burned off her back by the resulting fire,\nher image \u2013 naked, screaming and running away from the epicentre of the attack\n\u2013 was captured by an Associated Press photographer and became an iconic image\nof war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But, to many, it also became an image of peace, a symbol\nthat reminds people of the horrors of war in the hopes that it is never\nrepeated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For Ms. Phuc, however, it is something more: the\nbeginning of a story, one that set her on the path to forgiveness. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She shared her inspiring story of courage and faith with\nAurora residents this month at the Salvation Army\u2019s Northridge Community\nChurch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI was a healthy child and I knew nothing about war,\u201d\nsaid Ms. Phuc, addressing an audience of more than 100 people. \u201cMy most serious\ninjury had been hurting my knees when I fell off a bicycle.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She recalled the people of her village taking refuge in a\nnearby temple. For the children, it seemed more like an adventure than taking\ncover under the threat of fire. The temple was a safe, holy place, she said,\nand it was unimaginable that it could be violated by \u201cthe horrible fire that\nwould drop from the sky.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt was only when the soldiers yelled for the children to\nrun that we got really scared,\u201d she recalled. \u201cThe airplanes were so loud, so\nclose. We were running down the road and suddenly there were bombs, explosions\nof gasoline. My clothes were burned off, my skin was on fire, someone began\nscreaming, \u2018Too hot! Too hot!\u2019 That someone was me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those screams were captured by Associated Press\nphotographer Nick Ut, and so evocative was the resulting image that it won a\nPulitzer Prize. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat day changed my life forever,\u201d said Kim. \u201cNick took\nme to the nearest hospital and I was severely burned, so they moved me to the\nfirst children\u2019s hospital, where they gave up hope and placed me in the morgue.\nAfter three days of screaming, my parents found me in the morgue. Everybody was\nexpecting to bring my body back to the village for burial. Then, a miracle\nhappened: my father met a friend who worked at the hospital and asked for help.\nThey had me transferred to a burn clinic where I spent 14 months and thanks to\nGod and the wonderful doctors and nurses, I survived.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the course of her recovery, Kim Phuc endured\nseventeen operations, the last of which took place in Germany in 1984. Left\nwith scars on her back and left arm, she says she didn\u2019t feel pretty. She\nenvied her girlfriends who could wear short-sleeved shirts, certain that no boy\nwould ever love and marry her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI never thought I would have a normal life,\u201d she said,\n\u201cbut I was so wrong!\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Inspired by her long stay in the hospital, Kim developed\ndreams of being a doctor. Her doctors were her heroes, inspiring her every day\nof her recovery. Ten years after the bomb, she was accepted into medical\nschool. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She thought she was on track to achieve her dreams until\nthe Vietnamese government stepped in and decided she would be a potent war\nsymbol for their country. They cut short her study for those purposes and Ms.\nPhuc says she quickly began to feel like a caged bird.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI kept asking, \u2018Why me? Why did I have to suffer so\nmuch?\u2019 I used to curse those who had hurt me to death and I wanted them to\nsuffer even more than me. For a while, I had a lot of anger, but I knew I could\nnot live like that. I had to change my heart or die from hatred.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eventually, she says, she found what she needed in the\nlocal library, where she stumbled across a copy of the New Testament.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She became a Christian at the age of 19 and it was then,\nshe says, that she \u201cknew God had a purpose in her life.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eventually, the Vietnamese government allowed her to\ntravel to Cuba and it was there she met her husband and set her sights on a new\ndream: finding a way to live her life in freedom in the west. She and her\nhusband married in Cuba and received visas to honeymoon in Moscow. On their way\nback to Cuba, their flight had a stopover in Gander and, with their luggage\nstill on the plane, the newlywed couple decided to leave everything behind and\ndefect to Canada. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe had no money, no friends, nothing,\u201d she said. \u201cWe had\nno knowledge of the Canadian culture, no knowledge of the language \u2013 we had\nnothing but faith. My physical recovery was a challenge, my life in a new\ncountry was a challenge, but by far the biggest challenge was learning how to\nforgive those who caused my life.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the road to forgiveness, the Bible provided direction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She said she knew that in order to be truly free she had\nto learn how to forgive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Naturally, it was far from an easy process, but she knew\nshe could trust in God.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe more I prayed for my enemies, the softer my heart\nbecame,\u201d she said. \u201cI felt forgiveness completely in my heart. It didn\u2019t happen\novernight; it took a long time, but when I experienced real forgiveness, my\nheart felt free and it was Heaven on Earth for me. It sounds easy, but it was\nthe hardest work of my life. But, I did it \u2013 and if I could do it, all of you\ncan do it too.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The real test of her forgiveness came on a 1996 trip to\nWashington DC where Ms. Phuc was asked to deliver a few remarks at the Vietnam\nVeterans Memorial. There, she met many of the people involved in the conflict\nand forged an unlikely bond with one veteran who said he was struck by her\nmessage of having no animosity and only forgiveness for the pilot who put in\nthe air strike on her village.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt was a true reconciliation,\u201d said Ms. Phuc on meeting\nthis veteran. \u201cThe healing I went through made my body strong, but it also made\nmy mind and my faith strong. It gave me the determination to fulfil my life\ngoals.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now settled in Ajax, Kim and her husband were eventually\njoined here by her parents and, as a couple, they raised two sons and now enjoy\nthe company of a daughter-in-law and a grandson.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She feels privileged, she said, to work now as an\nadvocate and a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador, sharing her story along the way. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEvery time I travel, I call my mom and say, \u2018Mommy, that\nlittle girl isn\u2019t running anymore, she\u2019s flying.\u2019 My dream is that one day\npeople will live without fear in real peace with no fighting and no hostility.\nOur world is troubled and full of conflict, but every single day we have\nopportunities to be better people, better neighbours and better friends. I\nbelieve that peace, love and forgiveness will always be more powerful than\nbombs.\u201d<\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Iconic \u201cNapalm Girl\u201d shares story of forgiveness with Aurora<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":23621,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23633","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/2019-04-25-01.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-69b","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-15 10:57:25","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23633","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23633"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23633\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23621"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}