“Witness: The Power of a Picture,” an Eyewitness News special, will air on ABC7 in Los Angeles on Saturday, June 2, at 6:30 p.m.
Travel with ABC7 Eyewitness News anchor David Ono to Vietnam on the 40th anniversary of the Pulitzer Prize-winning photo known as “Napalm Girl,” which shows a 9-year-old girl whose clothes were burned off her body by napalm during the Vietnam War.
A photograph allows us to deeply examine a split second in time. It’s an opportunity to freeze the world and absorb all the emotions, actions, consequences that are attached to that moment. Photographer Nick Ut’s “Napalm Girl” did exactly that. The world saw an innocent child running naked, in seething pain. Children caught in the crossfire would forever have an indelible face – Kim Phuc.
That moment provided a sobering clarity as to how quickly innocent life can be shattered by war. Ono travels back to Trang Bang, where, 40 years ago, a 21-year-old photographer and a 9-year-old girl collided to create one of the most important images of the 20th century. It’s the story of Phuc, Ut and others who are helping to open the world’s eyes to the realities of war.
Ono recently traveled to Europe for a documentary on the Nisei soldiers of World War II, and to Japan to interview survivors of the earthquake and tsunami. He is vice president of broadcast for the Los Angeles chapter of the Asian American Journalists Association.
Ut, a native of Vietnam and a photographer for the Associated Press, received the National AAJA Lifetime Achievement Award in 2011. He donated a rare print of his iconic photo to AAJA-LA’s 30th anniversary Trivia Bowl live auction.
To see part of Ono’s interview with Ut, click here. To see part of Ono’s interview with Phuc, click here.