Photographer Nick Ut on the Vietnam 'napalm photo' 40 years on

Copyright: Nick Ut

It has been 40 years since Associated Press photographer Huynh Cong Ut, known as Nick, captured the powerful "napalm photo" in Vietnam. The Pulitzer prize-winning image shows a nine-year-old-girl, Kim Phuc - now a close friend of Ut's - running naked along Highway One after a napalm bombing.

While some of the other journalists with Ut frantically re-loaded their cameras, he managed to secure the famous image.

But his role that day was not just as a photographer. He wanted "to save [Phuc's] life first", Ut told Journalism.co.uk in an interview following the 40th anniversary of the image being captured.

Reflecting on that day - 8 June 1972 - Ut said he had seen heavy fighting in the early morning and had already taken a lot of pictures in the area. But suddenly napalm was dropped and "I saw the people running", he recalls. First this was adults carrying young children. And then he saw a girl running naked with other children, screaming.

I thought what happened? I took a lot of pictures of her and after I took the pictures I saw her skin coming offNick Ut

"I thought 'what happened?' I ran and took a lot of pictures of her and after I took the pictures I saw her skin coming off ... I don't want her to die."

At this moment he put his cameras down onto the road and, with a friend, tried to help with water.

He added: "When I took her picture and saw her skin coming off I think 'she be die, she be die'. I said, 'oh my god, I don't want no more pictures. I want to help her right away."

He helped Phuc get to a hospital and get treatment. And he returned to visit her and her family the next day.

"I am really so happy she was still alive and the picture can tell her story."

He added: "The picture moved all over the world. They never retouched any picture ... AP said no, we don't have to do that."

He said his boss was keen to send the image to AP in New York straight away. And the picture soon travelled across the world, he said.

"People were calling me and saying 'Nicky, thank you so much, the picture'. A lot of American soldiers came home early because of the picture.

On assignments, in Hollywood, people know who I am ... I'm so happy, I'm very proud of my photoNick Ut

"On assignments, in Hollywood, people know who I am ... I'm so happy, I'm very proud of my photo."

And the relationship between photographer and subject has remained strong over the years, he said.

"I'm always thinking about her a lot. I call her once a week. I talked to her like two days ago."

But the memories of that day 40 years ago are also strong. "I look at the picture, I cry sometimes," he said.

Ut was wounded three times himself while covering the Vietnam war. He tells us: "I really don't believe how I covered the war in Vietnam. It was so young for me at that time".

Ut's brother, who was also a photographer for AP, had taught him the trade "as a young man". And Ut ended up joining the AP just after his brother's death.

Today, more than 40 years after starting to take photos for AP, Ut continues to work for the news agency, having transferred to the Los Angeles bureau in 1977.

"I plan maybe retiring in a couple of years, maybe next year, who knows," he says. But for now, "I enjoy the job so much".

• In this Washington Post article photographer David Burnett, who was also on Highway One on 8 June 1972, "reflects on the moment that might have been his"
  

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