John Hamilton Dawson was born on June 6, 1926 in Des Moines, Polk County, Iowa, to John Hamilton Dawson, a Lutheran pastor, and Pauline Dawson, a mother.

Dawson went to high school and was impressed by the school's lesson of "For the Service of Humanity," which impressed him deeply and influenced his life. This was a very important starting point for later becoming a medical missionary.

He attended Brown University in March 1944, but dropped out and went back to Northwestern University Medical School to study medicine. On April 2, 1950, he married his acquaintance Mary Ann Hansen. On June 11, 1951, he completed his doctorate in medicine at the University of Chicago St. Luke's Hospital.

Dawson participated in the Korean War as a military doctor in the 1st Brigade of the U.S. Marine Corps from 1951 to 52 and was also awarded the "Presidential Unit Situation". The pain and deprivation of Korean he witnessed while treating numerous patients in Korea changed his mind, sparking a mission to medical mission, and he thought at the time, "I should try to do something to help Koreans later."

After being discharged from the U.S. Marine Corps in 1953, he worked as a surgical resident at Chicago's Hinds Veterans Hospital, where he met missionary Howard Moffett, director of Dongsan Christian Hospital. He was appointed a medical missionary by the Mercer Island Evangelical Covenant Church of America in June 1963 and visited Korea with his wife and children on 10 October 1963.

Dawson performed his first operation two days after arriving in Daegu. Since then, there have been days when at least one surgery a day and at most four surgeries have been performed. He served as a medical missionary in the position of chief of surgery at Dongsan Christian Hospital on behalf of chief of surgery Lee Chul.

He led or supervised more than 2,500 operations over the three years from 1963 to 1966. This is the number of surgeries that cannot be found. Through his dedication, numerous patients in Daegu and Gyeongsangbuk-do experienced treatment and recovery.

He transplanted hairs for patients with leprosy in Aerakwon who had no eyebrows, and he would connect eyelashes to jaw-moving muscles, and though this may look awkward with their mouths opened and their eyes closed, they could preserve their eyesight.

Dawson manufactured a high-pressure oxygen therapy device in 1966 and succeeded in treating about 40 briquette poisoning patients during 1968.

John Dawson Curing Patients

In addition to the hospital ministry, Dawson was also a visiting professor of surgery at Kyungpook National University Medical School and a joint professor of surgery at Yonsei University Medical School. He was a surgical adviser at a Korean Army hospital in Daegu, where a patient injured in the Vietnam War was accommodated, and also served as a surgical adviser at a general surgery clinic in Korea.

After completing medical missions in 1966, he returned to the United States with his family, and he wrote in a report, "I become rich and go back to America. What filled my pocket was none other than, but I return home filled with countless grace in my heart. I'm rich."

Dawson was called by God for leukemia on February 7, 2007, and his six children moved the remains to the Grace of Mercy Garden and erected a tombstone as their father's will.

His tombstone was inscribed with the Bible verse, "They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness." (Lamentations. 3:23).

John Dawson's tombstone enshrined in the Grace of Mercy Garden of Keimyung University Dongsan Medical Center