After Tom Dooley graduated from St. Louis University Medical School in 1953, he began a medical internship with the U.S. Navy and served on the U.S.S. Montague. After Vietnam was politically divided in 1954, Dooley helped with the "Passage to Freedom" program from August 1954 to May 1955. This program, based in Haiphong, Vietnam, was implemented to help refugees fleeing from North Vietnam to South Vietnam. Dooley served as a French interpreter and a medical officer, and he oversaw the building and maintenance of refugee camps. He helped to arrange the treatment of over 800,000 refugees fleeing from North Vietnam to South Vietnam in the "Passage to Freedom."
Dooley returned to the United States in November 1955 and published his first book, Deliver Us From Evil, about his experiences in Vietnam. In 1956, Dooley resigned from the Navy and used the proceeds from his books to establish hospitals in Southeast Asia with the sponsorship of the International Rescue Committee. He and three of his former Navy corpsmen friends established the first American sponsored hospitals in Laos at Vang Vieng in October 1956 to give medical care to those who had only one "bonafide" doctor in the entire country. After the men had trained local people to take over, they then established a hospital in Nam Tha, Laos, in February 1957. In October 1957, Dooley and his crew turned the Nam Tha hospital over to the Laotian government and returned to America. While there, Dooley wrote a second book entitled The Edge of Tomorrow.
Dooley wrote to Admiral Arleigh Burke and his mother Agnes describing the beginning of his work in Laos. Dooley worked with Admiral Burke in the Navy during the "Passage to Freedom" program.
