On the morning of June 12, 1972, U.S. President Richard Nixon walked into the White House to begin his day.12
In the first half of 1972, for Nixon, who had been struggling with the Vietnam War, there seemed to be a succession of good news.
The first is on February 21, when he successfully visited the People's Republic of China, where relations had been interrupted for more than 20 years, and his name was destined to leave an indelible mark on the history of the world.
Then, in March, the United States successfully contained the "Easter Offensive" launched by the North Vietnamese general Wu Yuanjia, who had exhausted almost all its military strength, and forced the triumphant North Vietnamese to return to the negotiating table with a record of killing and injuring 100,000 people.
But when he opened the important newspaper in the United States, The New York Times, he saw a front-page photo, which made him stunned, and immediately called to ask his White House chief of staff whether the photo was a "fake photo."
Because of this photo, the role of the Americans as butchers in the Vietnam War was thoroughly revealed. No amount of military victory could whitewash the United States, and the anti-war movement in the United States ushered in an unprecedented climax, resulting in the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Vietnam half a year earlier.
This history-changing photograph and its protagonist were later called "Incendiary Bomb Girls".
On June 8, 1972, a young Vietnamese-American Associated Press reporter, Hoang Kung Wu, was on a mission with a group of colleagues.
What they wanted to photograph was a great battle of the Vietnamese army in the north, about 30 kilometers north of Saigon City, near a small village called Lang Huan.
The powerful South Vietnamese underground party, one of the most important factors in the viet cong's victory over the U.S.-backed South Vietnamese regime, lurked in the vast rural areas around the big cities, and could not be distinguished from ordinary peasants.
The South Vietnamese Air Force piloted American "air raider" aircraft and captured North Vietnamese soldiers in the sky who came and went like a vole in the wind, and the arduous task of carefully separating soldiers and civilians had long tormented their nerves and exhausted their patience.
Passing over a local Gaotai temple, the pilot saw that there were many people gathered in the temple. "There must be a lot of Communist Party hiding in here." The pilot made a judgment between the electric light and flint, and directly dropped the napalm bomb and the white phosphorus bomb, and the temple caught fire in an instant.
Dedicated Associated Press reporters immediately set up their cameras and began to capture the footage.
Huang Gongwu was standing in the middle of the wide road, only to hear the piercing screams accompanied by shouts, and one after another South Vietnamese people rushed out of the High Terrace Temple, desperately fleeing along the road.
"It was hot! So hot! Huang Gongwu looked up, and several physically weak children ran with frightened faces, while looking back at the fierce and vicious soldiers behind them.
Shouting "so hot" to Huang Gongwu was a little girl, shockingly, she was completely naked, there were obvious burn marks on her skin, obviously, in order to survive, she had to give up all the dignity of a girl in the run.
Fortunately, the children on the side were not caught in the flames and could still wear shirts and rush to the road.
Huang Gongwu reacted instinctively, immediately pressed the shutter, and then quickly began to treat the girl and her companions, washing her wounds with clean water.
Subsequently, he photographed several burned skins of the girls as circumstantial evidence, and sent the terrified children to Saigon Hospital for treatment.
After Huang Gongwu washed out the photos, he named it "Fire From Heaven" and sent it to the Associated Press. The editor looked at this photo that was really "offensive" and didn't know how to deal with it for half a day.
But in terms of attracting attention, stimulating sales, and hitting people's hearts, among all the works of this group of journalists, even among all the Vietnam War photos taken by the Associated Press before, there is no match for this photo.
After much deliberation, the editor decided to cut out the American photographer who appeared in the shot and publish the photo in the June 12 newspaper.
On the day of the release, the united States was shaken, and the North Vietnamese government immediately used this photo to attack the War Stance of the United States, and Nixon was almost overwhelmed and had to decide to speed up the withdrawal of troops from South Vietnam.
The protagonist in the photo, the little girl, is called Pan Jinshu, who was only 9 years old at the time, and it was their family who hid in the Gaotai Temple that time. The incendiary bomb killed her two cousins on the spot, and the other children in the photo were also relatives and family members of her.
Pan Jinshu recalled that at that time, several of their children hid in the temple to avoid bombing, who knew that she suddenly heard a shout from the soldiers outside, four bombs fell around her, and the temple suddenly turned into a sea of fire, so that she could hardly see anyone around her.
In the process of rushing out, Pan Jinshu's left sleeve rubbed into the flame and immediately burned, she had to tear off all her clothes with her right hand, while desperately running with her brothers and sisters, just when she was exhausted, she happened to meet Huang Gongwu who took pictures. After taking a sip of water from Huang Gongwu's hand, Pan Jinshu fell down and fainted.
After the hospital examination, Pan Jinshu had more than 90% burns all over her body, and the hospital doctor once thought that she had returned to the sky and lacked surgery.
However, Pan Jinshu's vitality is very tenacious, she successfully survived 14 months of hospitalization, and as many as 17 major surgeries during the period, and successfully climbed back from the ghost gate.
Huang Gongwu did not forget the girl who used her tragic fate to send her 21-year-old self to the Pulitzer Prize, and often took the opportunity to visit her, and the two formed a forgetful friendship.
Pan Jinshu is still lying in a hospital coma, and her name has spread all over the world, which is a golden opportunity for propagandists.
In 1975, when North Vietnam attacked Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam, Huang Gongwu withdrew to the United States, but Phan Kim Sook received special care from the Vietnamese government.
The government not only gave her a relatively generous living guarantee, but also repeatedly used her tragic experience as the best propaganda tool for anti-American and anti-war in the international community. This kind of life makes Pan Jinshu miserable.
No one really cared about her burned skin not being able to sweat, and no one really cared about her being tormented by the desperate memories of the day for many years, and her spirit almost collapsed to the point of suicide.
Since the tragedy originated in that High-Level temple, she finally abandoned the traditional Vietnamese high-level religion and became a Christian.
At that time, Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Van Tong was very concerned about Phan Kim Sook, and repeatedly expressed condolences to her through public and private channels, and the two eventually became good friends.
In order to escape too much anti-war propaganda work in Vietnam, she successfully applied for a place to study in Cuba in 1986 with the help of Fan Wentong.
Later facts proved that Fan Wentong's decision on this matter was very hasty, and it also gave the United States a wonderful opportunity to turn the tables on the propaganda disadvantage.
During her study in Cuba, Pan Jinshu met Pei Huiquan, and the two soon fell in love, and more importantly, Pan Jinshu and Huang Youwu met again.
Huang Youwu came from the United States to meet Pan Jinshu, the two met in addition to reminiscing about what they also talked about, today we do not know the details, but from the later development, Pan Jinshu obviously yearns for Huang Youwu's life in the United States.
In 1992, When Phan Kim Sook married Bae Hui Quan, they chose moscow for their honeymoon, and Vietnamese officials certainly did not want to oppose such an arrangement.
The return route to Moscow is special, not going directly to Vietnam via the nearer Asian route, but taking a long detour, refueling from North America, and flying back around the Pacific Ocean.
And that's why Mr. and Mrs. Pan jinshu carefully chose this flight. What happened next, we Chinese have seen a lot of it.
When the plane returned to Gander, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada, to refuel, Pan jinshu and his wife suddenly ran off the plane and applied for "political asylum", claiming to feel "free" in Canada.
The pan jinshu couple's move is tantamount to pie in the sky for the U.S. government that has been troubled by them for decades:
The "perfect victim" who once humiliated the United States to the point of utter humiliating in the field of world public opinion has not only converted to Christianity in the Western world, but even voluntarily defected to the "free world." What could wash away the moral stain that he has been carrying more than this?
During the Vietnam War, carpet bombings, assassinations, mass poisoning and heavy fighting took place, killing an estimated of more than three million Vietnamese soldiers and civilians, two-thirds of whom were civilians.
For this reason, for a long time, the United States had to pinch its nose and endure the criticism and criticism of the world media from time to time. When Pan Jinshu came to Canada, she turned all this around.
First, as the most famous representative of the Vietnamese victims, there is nothing more to wash away the guilt of the US military than the "forgiveness" from Ban Kim Sook.
Such a performance was arranged quickly. On November 11, 1996, at the U.S. Veterans Day ceremony held in front of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, a highly anticipated "big star" - Pan Kim Sook appeared.
In her speech, she called for the fact that we cannot change the past, but we can work to build a peaceful future, which of course won a lot of applause.
However, when she turned around at the end of her speech, she found that behind her, at an unknown time, a bearded man dressed as a priest appeared.
The pastor, named John Pramo, told Pan Jinshu that he was the one who ordered the bombing of the waves, and later because of his bad conscience, he turned to a priest after retiring from the army, and he came today to ask Pan Jinshu's "forgiveness".
Pramo bowed his head and bent down, repeating sorry with his mouth, what can Pan Jinshu do? Nature hugged him tightly, said that everything was over, and forgave Pramo herself.
ABC immediately produced a special report with the headline "Kim Sook forgives the Americans who ordered the bombing." Now that the victims have been forgiven, Americans no longer have to bear the guilt of the "incendiary bomb girls."
When the Americans got the "forgiveness" they wanted, the drama unfolded even more bizarrely: a "person who actually understood the attack" jumped out and refuted Pramo's claim that he had ordered the bombing, and Pramo later admitted that he "did not personally order" the airstrike, but was only responsible for coordinating operations with South Vietnam.
Pramo's colleagues were "also indignant," arguing that he had exaggerated his importance in the attack and unfairly rebuked the U.S. military because "the fighting on the ground at the time was carried out almost entirely by the South Vietnamese Army." The implication is that what happened to Pan Jinshu is not the fault of the US military at all.
Whether Pramo gave the order or not, whether he was the culprit who dropped the incendiary bomb at that time, neither himself nor the US military had a reason to make such a oolong, but in any case, Pan Jinshu's vital "forgiveness" was really said.
According to Pan Jinshu, she fled to Canada in order to live a "free life" of "anonymity and no quarrel with the world". But such a desire is destined to be a luxury for a celebrity with great publicity value.
On 10 November 1997, Pan Jinshu was appointed UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador, and in light of her childhood experiences, she focused primarily on helping war-torn children around the world by building schools, hospitals and orphanages.
The Pan family eventually settled in Ontario, Canada, and in 2004, in recognition of her contributions to children's causes, York University in Toronto gave her an honorary Doctor of Laws degree and ontario a "Highest Medal of Honor."
From 2005 to 2016, she abandoned her medical studies in Vietnam and Cuba to pursue a law major in Canada, where she earned her Juris Doctorate.
Today' Pan Jinshu is already a western aunt with a typical Vietnamese round face and bright clothes, and in front of many interview shots, she talks about the painful experience of childhood in a tone that does not mind at all.
That's exactly what the Western media need, and one of their favorite questions in interviews is, "How do you get out of that pain?" ”
Whenever this happens, Pan Jinshu always gives a "perfect" answer: I can't get rid of it after a long time in hatred, and finally rely on forgiveness and love, and even love for the enemy, to get rid of the nightmare of childhood and regain peace.
Pan Jinshu also loved the burns on her body, which almost made her die when she was 9 years old, but also for her to obtain the communication capital that ordinary people could not hope for in the Western world.
Today, she has set up a foundation named after herself, and it is said that the main proceeds of the fundraising are used to save children. Of course, the mysterious force behind all this turning bad things into good things is her now devout faith in Jesus Christ.
But I don't know if Pan Jinshu remembers that there were many Christians among the American soldiers who flew planes to bomb their motherland.
The U.S. military that killed 2 million compatriots in the Vietnam War can be forgiven by her, but who will forgive ordinary people who died in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Syria, Afghanistan and other places?