The 1972 photo of a 9-year-old Vietnamese girl running through the street naked suffering from napalm burns became one of the most unforgettable images of the war.
That girl, Kim Phuc Phan Thai, is now 46 and lives in Canada. She spoke of her ordeal recently to the Phoenix Society for Burn Survivors to offer a message of hope for burn victims,
Sixty-five percent of my body got burned,"

Phuc says her face was untouched by the napalm, but the third-degree burns sheared the skin from her back and left arm, leaving permanent scars and recurring pain.

Phuc says she spent 14 months in a burn unit and underwent 17 operations.

"I should be dead," Phuc tells HealthDay.

"But I was spared," she says. "So now I think, 'I cannot change something that happened to me already. But I can change the meaning.' "

Associated Press photographer Nick Ut won a Pulitzer for the photo.

Clarification: Some readers noted that in the posting and the article she is called Phuc on second reference, although her full name ends in Thai. It is complicated, but here goes: Kim Phuc Phan Thai is her full name. It can also be written as Phan Thị Kim Phúc.

As HealthDay noted in its story, she is commonly known as Kim Phuc. For example, the name of her foundation is the Kim Phuc Foundation International.

We also found a fascinating article by a Vietnamese writer noting that there are only about 100 family names in Vietnamese (with Nguyen being the most common) so most people go by their given name, this case Phuc.