Nick Ut and Phan Thi Kim Phuc, the girl of the iconic Vietnam War photo, appears in this picture taken in May, 2009 at Vietnam Memorial Soldiers in Washington D.C. (AP Photo/Nick Ut)

By Frank Shyong
Voices

The iconic photo of Kim Phuc, the “Napalm Girl,” earned Nick Ut the Pulitzer Prize at 21, and many say it helped end American involvement in the Vietnam War.

Ut has worked as an Associated Press photographer for 45 years. Based in Los Angeles, he has shot everything from the Los Angeles Lakers to Hollywood’s elite, attaining so much respect on his beat that even the most cutthroat celebrity photographers make a space for him in the paparazzi lineup.

At this year’s AAJA convention, he’ll be receiving a lifetime achievement award, the highest honor bestowed by the organization.

So why does he still feel overshadowed by his older brother?

“Everybody knew my brother,” Ut said. “He was famous.”

That brother was an AP photographer killed in Vietnam in October 1965, when the Vietcong overran the Mekong Delta medical station where he was waiting to be evacuated. Huynh Than My was a tenacious, tough photographer who began his career lugging equipment across battlefields for CBS. Nearly every journalist in Saigon attended his funeral.

To Ut, he was big brother No. 7, in the naming parlance of some Vietnamese families who assign nicknames based on order of birth. Although Ut – number 10 of 11 – didn’t see My often because of his work, they shared a dream.

“My brother saw people die every day,” Ut said. “He wanted to take a picture that would end the war. But he died before that. I kept thinking, maybe me someday.”

In January 1965, his brother’s boss, Horst Faas, hired Ut as a darkroom assistant. One day, everyone else was gone when an assignment came up, and suddenly little brother Nickie was an AP photographer. As he covered the war for the next eight years, he kept looking for an opportunity to take that photo his brother never did.

That opportunity came June 8, 1972.

Ut’s assignment was to travel to Trang Bang and shoot the South Vietnamese troops battling North Vietnamese forces who had blocked Route 1, a road leading from Saigon to the Cambodian border.

At Trang Bang, he spotted yellow smoke wafting from a thrown grenade, marking the area for approaching bombers. Napalm and explosives pounded the village, and after the planes left, terrified villagers fled on foot.

Ut saw the 9-year-old Phuc running. He started running too. He raised his camera and clicked the shutter just 10 times. Then, he set all four of his cameras down in the thick dust of Route 1, gathered Phuc in his arms and took her to a hospital. He made sure she was taken care of before going back to the office and filing his work.

“I shot two kids dying that day,” Ut said. “I didn’t want to see any more.”

But while he fretted over Phuc’s condition, Ut was concerned for his photos. The conditions weren’t optimal, the air was dusty and the sky was cloudy. As he waited for the photos to develop at the office, he clutched a camera and thought of his brother.

Please help me, Ut prayed. I need a good picture.

The photos came back. The first six images didn’t work, but No. 7 was perfect. It depicted Phuc, running nude, burns clearly visible and her brother’s face twisted in terror – the horror and tragedy of a war captured in a single, searing shot.

Photo No. 7 was transmitted all over the world. It appeared on the front pages of newspapers and magazines everywhere.

The iconic photo from the Vietnam War was taken June 8, 1972. Nine year-old Kim Phúc, (middle left) runs naked in the street after tearing off her clothes, which had been set afire by burning napalm. Also pictured are her brothers Phan Thanh Tam, 12 (left), Phan Thanh Phuoc, 5, (back left) and younger cousins Ho Van Bo and Ho Thi Ting, right. (Nick Ut | Associated Press)

Damian Dovarganes, another photographer in AP’s Los Angeles bureau, was drawn to the photo as a teenager growing up in Mexico. He compares it to Pablo Picasso’s Guernica, a painting that depicts the tragedies of war.

“The nakedness of the girl and the scream of the little brother next to her. … There’s something about it that shames you,” Dovarganes said. “You can have a nightmare from this picture.”

Kim Phuc survived and went on to establish the Kim Phuc Foundation, a nonprofit that provides medical and psychological aid to child victims of war.

And today, Ut still associates his brother with that photo. And though that shot won nearly every award a photo could win, it hasn’t gone to his head.

“I was lucky,” he says constantly.

At Ocean Star, his favorite dim sum restaurant in the San Gabriel Valley outside Los Angeles, Ut orders shu mai, hargow and rice dumplings with shrimp. He treats everyone at the table with humble but insistent hospitality, placing the last servings onto his guests’ plates.

Ut visits Vietnam often, but his new home is here in the valley, with Asian faces surrounding him and the predominantly Vietnamese city of Garden Grove just a short drive away.

As he reflects on that moment 39 years ago, he decides his best moment wasn’t taking the photo. Rather, he’s most proud of putting the camera down.

“War is always sad. You witnessed (a) lot of people dying. But it’s not like that with Kim. I don’t like taking pictures of people dying. If they die, it doesn’t tell any story.”

Follow Frank Shyong @frankshyong.