One of the most unforgettable photographs of all time was snapped in 1972 and hastened America's withdrawal from the war. On June 8 of that year a South Vietnamese pilot inadvertently dropped napalm on the Cao Dai temple at Trang Bang, a small village 25 miles west of Saigon. Gobs of the burning goo, a "breath of hell" at 4000 degrees, splashed on several children who were hiding from the strike in the temple. One child was killed and one, Kim Phuc, age nine, was severely injured.

Kim tore off her flaming clothes and ran naked into the streets and into the eyes of history. Nick Ut, a photographer born in South Vietnam but reared in England, snapped a Pulitzer Prize winning photo of Kim that portrayed the horrors of war perhaps as well as any image ever taken. The look of pain and terror on the young girl's face was flashed immediately around a shocked world. The photo continues to be widely published today.

After snapping the photo, Ut doused the naked Kim with water and rushed her to a hospital. The young girl was given no chance to live by the doctors. She was set aside in a makeshift morgue to die while the staff cared for others deemed more likely to survive. Her father found her and begged the doctors to try and save his child. They agreed and she did survive, after a long and painful rehabilitation.

The battle to survive her injuries was followed by an equally difficult battle to survive emotionally in a war-torn and corrupt country that insisted on using her as propaganda against the West. She defected to Canada in 1992 and is now a UNESCO spokesperson for world peace. Her story, chronicled in "The Girl In the Picture," by Denise Chong, is as gripping as the photo.

I met Kim's family recently, still living in her former home in Trang Bang. I spent two of the most poignant hours of my life reliving her story with them, in pictures and videos. Much of this information, and the picture, is available, not only in the above book, but simply by searching Kim Phuc on the internet.