On a journey through Vietnam with two historic figures, learning about history and forgiveness

Even after more than a half-century, the image still sears.

You know the picture. One of the most indelible images from the Vietnam War, the photograph shows terrified children screaming as they run down a road after their village about 30 miles northwest of Saigon had been napalmed by South Vietnamese forces.

At the center of the picture is a distraught 9-year-old girl named Kim Phúc. She is naked because her clothes had been burned off her slender body.

Nick Ut, an Associated Press photographer, won a Pulitzer Prize and a host of other honors for documenting that nightmarish moment in June 1972. Besides being a splendid photojournalist with an instinct for the decisive moment, Ut showed that day that he was a caring human being: After snapping a picture that would become famous, he put down his camera and led the girl to people who would care for her wounds, both physical and psychological. (She underwent 17 operations, the last in 1984.)

That moment, when Kim and Nick were thrown together in the middle of a war, was the basis for a friendship that has lasted ever since. Kim, now 61 and a grandmother who lives in Toronto, calls him Uncle Ut.

Speakers, and more

The two of them were speakers on a trip to Vietnam that I took earlier this year. The prospect of meeting them was my principal motivation for signing up for a journey that started in Saigon (now officially renamed Ho Chi Minh City) and went, aboard the Jacques Cartier, up the coast to Hanoi, with stops en route to explore cities and historic sites.

Often during the trip, I never ceased to marvel that I had paid a substantial sum — about $15,000 — to visit a country that I had been desperate to stay out of when I was in college slightly more than a half-century ago and the war there was raging. But I digress.

Kim and Nick, 73, were so much more than speakers on a program. In addition to delivering emotional, information-packed speeches, they were always available and unfailingly friendly to their fellow shipmates throughout the voyage. A favorite topic of hers was the Kim Foundation, which she has established to help children like her who have survived traumatic events.

Nick, an elfin man, lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children. Even though he retired in 2017 after a 51-year career with The Associated Press, Nick still takes a childlike delight in photographing everything around him, including his native land, which he visits frequently.

With our group, he did more than seek out photo ops on day trips: Shortly before sunrise one day in Hanoi, Nick took a small group of us to two parks near our hotel where we could watch men and women dance and practice tai chi.

Dressed for the occasion

Even though the hour was early, they had dressed for the occasion.

One woman who caught my eye wore a crimson áo-dài — a full-length tunic with waist-high slits up the sides to reveal matching silk trousers — and a similarly colored ribbon-like scarf around her neck that floated in the muggy air as she twirled. 

That early morning ritual — we also saw and photographed one like it in Saigon — is something that, I’m sure, has endured for generations, just like the markets lining alleys where people sell flowers, beautifully carved coffins, produce and meat: live chickens in stacks of cages and cuts of meat that attract flies when they hang in the open air.

When I asked a guide how people could eat food that comes from such unsanitary conditions, he said, “We have strong stomachs.”

Although the Communist Party rules Vietnam, the country has become an economic powerhouse in the region. Capitalism has established a foothold in the bigger cities, where high-rises stand side by side with buildings erected when the French ruled the country in the 19th century.

Nha Trang, which we glimpsed from our ship, has gleaming towers that made me think of Miami Beach.

This trend extends to upscale hotels. Before boarding our ship, we stayed in the stunning Park Hyatt Saigon, across from the elegant opera house that the French built. In Hanoi, we bunked in the swanky Hotel Metropole. The bigger cities, in addition to numerous souvenir shops, have high-toned retail outlets such as Cartier, Louis Vuitton and Hermès.

It's still Saigon

This outward display of prosperity was a far cry from the war-ravaged villages one might expect after relentless coverage of the war that polarized America.

As that war dragged on, Ho Chi Minh, who has been regarded as the father of his country, was a familiar figure on TV screens even after his death in 1969.

The city we knew then as Saigon has undergone an official name change to honor him, but we never heard any Vietnamese people refer to the city as anything but Saigon.

Ho’s massive portrait looms over the barrel-vaulted main hall in the Saigon Central Post Office, another souvenir of French rule, but our guide never mentioned his name.

Another reminder of Vietnam’s history came during a visit to Hoi An, which attracted Japanese and Chinese merchants over the centuries and boasts an eclectic array of buildings and temples that they erected.

At sundown, the city’s chief attraction is the waterfront, which is aglow with the lights from dozens of lanterns hanging from trees and on boats that ply the Thu Bon River. The sight never ceases to draw crowds.

To my surprise, the war was seldom a topic that any Vietnamese people brought up with us, although some made pointed remarks about that conflict in speeches during a formal dinner.

The guests included Marc E. Knapper, the U.S. ambassador to Vietnam, who showed no emotion.

Independence Palace

There were, to be sure, other reminders of the war. One of our first stops in Saigon was Independence Palace, where two North Vietnamese tanks crashed through the gates on April 30, 1975.

A soldier unfurled a Viet Cong flag on the roof, signaling the end of South Vietnam. Since then, the massive structure also has been known as Reunification Palace.

A tour stop in Hanoi was the infamous Hoa Lo Prison, sarcastically known as the Hanoi Hilton, where prisoners of war like future U.S. Sen. John McCain were held and tortured.

Another war-related building we visited was the War Remnants Museum in Saigon, which was once undiplomatically called the Museum of Chinese and American War Crimes.

That museum, which has an array of captured U.S. aircraft in the forecourt, boasts gallery after gallery of war photographs, and it gives prominent space to a blown-up version of Nick’s famous photo.

While I was gazing at it, I felt someone playfully tugging at my sleeve. It was Nick, who was wandering through the building, camera slung over his right shoulder, just like any other visitor.

Strong feelings?

If the Vietnamese people harbor strong feelings about that conflict, which lasted nearly 20 years, they keep those thoughts to themselves, at least when visitors are nearby.

When we were there, they were only too happy to welcome us to classes in cooking and lantern-making, and they bundled us into pedicabs for a giddy, white-knuckle ride as we threaded our way through Saigon’s chaotic, jam-packed morning rush hour traffic, where squadrons of motor scooters rule the road.

One obvious answer for this politeness is that the Vietnamese are eager to cater to cash-carrying tourists, more than 717,000 of whom visited the country last year from the United States alone, according to Vietnam’s Ministry of Culture, Sport & Tourism.

But I like to think that they have moved on — after all, the conflict ended 49 years ago when South Vietnam fell — and, perhaps, adopted a trait that Kim discussed: forgiveness.

In a talk during the cruise, she said she had no choice because the bitterness she had felt for years was eating her up inside. After converting to Christianity, Kim said she started to work, day by day, on transforming that bitterness into forgiveness, even to the man who had coordinated the napalm strike on her village. The two met in 1996, when she spoke at a ceremony at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C.