Huynh Cong Ut (pronounced "oot"), known by his colleagues as Nick, was working there as a photo journalist for Associated Press at the time and took a number of photographs of the villagers trying to escape the napalm. This one, epitomising the savagery and tragedy of the conflict, won him the coveted Pulitzer Prize and became one of the most published photos of the Vietnam war.

The girl in the photo is nine-year old Phan Thi Kim Phuc. Having torn off her burning clothes she was screaming 'nong qua, nong qua' ['too hot, too hot'] as she ran towards Ut. The boy is her older brother Tam who survived the attack but lost an eye. Ut poured water onto the young girl and took her and some of the other children to a hospital near Saigon where she spent fourteen months recovering from the horrific burns to her skin.

As an adult Kim studied medicine and in the early 1990s was allowed to leave Vietnam to further her studies in Cuba where she met her future husband and in 1992 she defected to Canada.

She began using her fame as the "symbol of the people's war" to speak for peace and in 1997 founded the Kim Foundation in Chicago to help children who become victims of war. Later the same year she was named a Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO).