News-Info-Alerts

Re: Ex-POW, Vietnam Nurse Passes

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Date: August 11, 2002

"Obituary: Kathleen Hamilton, 65, dies; was civilian POW in Philippines, nurse in Vietnam

Trudi Hahn - Star Tribune

The first time war engulfed Kathleen Hamilton, she was a toddler caught up in circumstances. The second time, she volunteered.

Hamilton, who was a civilian prisoner of war in the Philippines during World War II and a military nurse during the Vietnam War, died of a brain tumor Sunday in Minneapolis. She was 65.

Born in St. Paul to missionaries of the Christian Missionary Alliance, she went at age 1 with her parents to France, where they learned the language for their assignment in what was then French Indochina. Between 1938 and 1942, two more babies were born as the family was driven by the shadow of war from Paris to French Indochina to the Philippines. Kathleen's father, responsible for three small children in a war zone, brought his family out of their mountain hideout and surrendered the family to the Japanese.

They landed in a large civilian POW camp in Manila, said her sister Joan McNaughton of Minneapolis.

After U.S. troops liberated the camp in February 1945, the family returned to the United States.

Back in St. Paul, Kathleen, 9, was put in first grade by the school district, but she eventually caught up to her age group.

"She was quite traumatized" by the POW experience, said her sister, who was born while the family was hiding and was 3 when liberated. "She couldn't watch war films. Both Kay [Kathleen] and our brother would dive if a loud plane went over."

Hamilton became a nurse about 1957, and when U.S. involvement in Vietnam heated up, she joined the Air Force in 1965. She requested a post in the Pacific Northwest, hoping to ski and enjoy the ocean. Instead, she received a two-year posting to the high plains of Glasgow, Mont., McNaughton said.

Hamilton volunteered for a year in Vietnam. She wasn't in much physical danger while nursing at the U.S. air base in Cam Ranh Bay, but the casualty load started rising early in 1968 during the Tet offensive.

"She thought it was a waste -- the wounded coming in continually, patching them up and sending them back out, her sister said. "The minute she got back [in late 1968], she joined the Vietnam Veterans Against the War."

In later years, Hamilton told family members she had volunteered for the war zone because she felt "really grateful to the soldiers who rescued her in the Philippines," her sister said.

After Vietnam, Hamilton used the G.I. Bill to get a degree in psychology at the University of Minnesota. She worked about 15 years in chemical dependency at Abbott Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis, her sister said, and then joined the Ebenezer health-care homes in Minneapolis, from which she retired in the late 1990s when her health started to fail.

In addition to her sister, survivors include her husband, King Hamilton of Golden Valley; father, Robert McNaughton of Arden Hills; step-sons Robert Hamilton of Denver and Chris Hamilton of Bemidji; sister Susan Anderson of St. Paul, and brother, John McNaughton of Spring Lake, Minn.

Services will be held at 11 a.m. Friday at Gill Brothers Funeral Chapel, 5801 Lyndale Av. S. in Minneapolis. Visitation is at 10 a.m.

-- Trudi Hahn is at thahn@startribune.com.

© Copyright 2002 Star Tribune"