Born in Rangoon, he was the son of American Baptist missionaries Rev.
[1] As such he represented the fourth generation of a mission tradition begun when his great-grandparents Justus Vinton, Calista Holman, James Madison Haswell and Jane Mason, were sent to Moulmain, Burma in 1834 and 1835 to establish a Baptist mission, work continued in subsequent generations by several family members, including his great-aunt, missionary and physician Calista Vinton Luther.
He served as chief medical officer for the Shan States of Burma with the British military government from 1945-46.
He was sentenced in January 1951 to six years at hard labor, on charges that he wrote a letter that helped Karen rebels arrest a government commissioner, and that he gave medical help to the Karen rebels.
The sentence was later reduced to six months, and in November 1951 the verdict was overturned by Burma's three-man Supreme Court and he was declared not guilty.