Det danske Fredsakademi
Kronologi over fredssagen og international politik 8. Juni 2012 / Time Line June 8, 2012
Version 3.006/08/2012
Crying children, including 9-year-old Kim Phuc, center, run down
Route 1 near Trang Bang, Vietnam after an aerial napalm attack on suspected
Viet Cong hiding places as South Vietnamese forces from the 25th
Division walk behind them, June 8, 1972. (Nick Ut/AP).
06/08/2012
Vietnamesisk offer tilgiver amerikansk pilot
Af Karsten Mathiasen, fra min pjece "Little Sticks in the
Wheel of Hate and Revenge"
Det mest berømte foto fra Vietnamkrigen har 40 års
jubilæum (Eller som vietnameserne siger "Den Amerikanske
Krig") I den anledning vil jeg gerne gøre opmærksom
på, at den lille pige 24 år senere mødte den
amerikanske helikopterpilopt,og udtrykte sin tilgivelse. Dermed
befriede hun ham for de mareridt der havde fulgt ham. Citat fra min
lille bog "Little Sticks in the Wheel of Hate and Revenge":
Victim forgives American soldier
Jan Oberg told me about this book. In my generation we all remember
this photo from the war in Vietnam. I love this story about this
little girl forgiving the helicopter pilot John Plummer, who had
been haunted by this picture for 24 years.
From the chapter Forgiving Ourselves (p. 117-119)
John Plummer lives the quiet life of a Methodist pastor in a sleepy
Virginia town these days, but things weren’t always so. A
helicopter pilot during the Vietnam War, he helped organize a
napalm raid on the village of Trang Bang in 1972 – a bombing
immortalized by the prize-winning photograph of one of its victims,
Phan Thi Kim Phuc, shown on the cover of this book.
For the next twenty-four years, John was haunted by this picture,
an image that for many people captured the essence of the war: a
naked nine-year-old girl, burned, crying, arms outstretched,
running toward the camera, with plumes of black smoke billowing in
the sky behind her. For twenty-four years his conscience tormented
him. He badly wanted to find the girl, to say that he was sorry
– but he could not. At least as a country, Vietnam was a
closed chapter for him; he could never bring himself to go there
again. Friends tried to reassure him. Hadn’t he done
everything within his power to see that the village was cleared of
civilians? But still he found no peace. He turned in on himself,
his marriage failed, and he began to drink. Then, in an almost
unbelievable coincidence, on Veterans Day 1996, John met Kim at the
Vietnam Memorial. Kim had come to Washington, D.C. to lay a wreath
for peace; John had come with a group of former pilots still
searching for freedom from the past. In a speech to the crowd, Kim
said the she was not bitter. Although she still suffered immensely
from her burns, she wanted people to know that others had suffered
even more: “Behind that picture of me, thousands and
thousands of people…died. They lost parts of their bodies.
Their whole lives were destroyed, and nobody took their
picture.” *)
Kim went on to the say that she forgave the men who had bombed her
village, and that although she could not change the past, she now
wanted to “promote peace”. John, beside himself, pushed
trough the crowds and managed to catch her attention before she was
whisked away by a police escort. He identified himself as the pilot
responsible for bombing her village twentyfoour years before, and
they where able to talk for two short minutes.
Kim saw my grief, my pain, my sorrow… She held out her arms
to me and embraced me. All I could say was “I’m sorry;
I’m sorry” – over and over again. And at the same
time she was saying, “It’s all right, I forgive
you.” *)
They met again later the same day, and Kim reaffirmed her
forgiveness. They have since become good friends, and call each
other regularly. Has John found the peace he was searching for? He
says he has. Although his emotions are still easily stirred by
memories of the war, he feels that he has now been able to forgive
himself and put the event behind him.
John says that it was vital for him to meet face to face with Kim,
to tell her that he had truly agonized over her injuries. All the
same, he maintains that the forgiveness he has received is a gift
– not something earned or even deserved. It is, finally, a
mystery: he still can’t quite grasp how a two-minute talk
could wipe away a twenty-four-year nightmare.
*) Christian Century, February 19, 1997, 182 – 184.
Bogen jeg citerer fra er The lost Art of Forgiving - Stories of
Healing the Cancer of Bitterness, af Johann Christoph Arnold
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