Nick Ut, the reputed AP war correspondent and World Press Photo Pulitzer winner for his photo of a girl injured by napalm, has returned to Vietnam.

The trip was arranged by ABC News, the USA’s biggest television channel, to shoot a reportage of his meeting with characters in his famous photo taken in Trang Bang, Tay Ninh Province during the US napalm bombardment on the area.

Nick Ut was accompanied by many students from Barbara Secondary School who are engaging in historical research.

They gathered at a Trang Bang rice spaghetti restaurant of late Phan Thanh Tan’s wife and children and a grocery store of Ho Thi Hien and Ho Van Bach who were running to escape from the napalm bombs in Nick Ut’s historic photo.

The accompanying American students could not check tears watching films and being told by witnesses of the napalm bombardment of the American troops on that day. They confided that they could feel the pains and fears experienced by the children in the photo. However, they felt at ease to hear one of the then victims Ms. Ho Thi Hien say that she did not want to recall the war and “let bygones be bygones”.

Nick Ut himself could not hold back his feelings at seeing the American students crying.

He also said that he received hundreds of emails from students and teachers around the world with the aim to find out more about his photos.

During this return, Nick Ut also met with a Vietnamese war reporter-photographer Doan Cong Tinh, a former reporter of the People’s Army Newspaper. The Vietnamese photographer once again praised Nick Ut for his photos of the Vietnamese napalm bomb victims that further sped up the anti-Vietnam War movement in the USA and the rest of the world. Photographer Doan Cong Tinh affirmed that Nick Ut had done the thing that no one could do.

Nick Ut revealed that this September, he will receive the Hall of The Fame Award by Leica, presented in Germany. This unusual award is to honour the most famous photographers alive.

Nick Ut had used a Leica M2 to take the photo of “Napalm Girl”, one of the photos that helped change the world’s history.

Source: TT

Translated by Mai Huong