Dorothy Joy Kinney was born September 16, 1901, in New Mexico. Her father, Rev. Bruce Kinney, was an American Baptist minister.

She received her Bachelor of Science from Denison University in Iowa, and her medical degree from the University of Colorado Medical School in 1926.

In 1928, Dorothy traveled to Assam in northeast India as a medical missionary for the American Baptist Foreign Mission Society. She served almost nine years as director, physician, and surgeon at the Satribari Compound in Gauhati, India.

June 30, 1936, Dorothy married Dr. Fred R. Chambers, who had previously been widowed during his educational missionary posting in Jorhat, Assam. 

After enduring a six month separation following their wedding, Dorothy's replacement arrived in Gauhati, and Dorothy took up residence with her new husband in Jorhat. She provided medical services for Fred's students at the Jorhat Christian School for Boys.
Their daughter, Carol Joy, was born in November 1937. The Chambers family traveled on furlough to the U.S. in February 1938. After more than a year of furlough, they were posted to the Philippines and sailed on September 2, 1939, one day after Germany invaded Poland. All their possessions which had been stored in India were sunk by a British landmine in Singapore Bay.

Robert Bruce Chambers was born in February of 1940. Dorothy had contracted dysentery in Manila while taking the exams for medical certification and nearly lost the baby. At the time, Fred Chambers was Dean of Theology at Central Philippine University in Iloilo City and shortly thereafter became president. 

When the Japanese invaded the island, Dorothy and Fred removed their family inland to Calinog, and Fred hid the university's important papers in a cave outside Iloilo.
There were thirty missionaries in the region, and nineteen of them fled into the hills to evade the Japanese. Not wishing to put the Filipinos in jeopardy by hiding them, Dorothy and Fred stayed in Calinog and were taken into custody shortly after Easter of 1942. For fourteen months they were interned in a makeshift prison at a Calinog elementary school. 

In June of 1943, the family and other prisoners were transferred to a larger internment camp in Manila, where they were held with 4,000 others on the grounds of Santo Tomas University. Dorothy and the children were housed in a six foot by four foot space and Fred was assigned to the balcony of the gym where cots were lined up six inches apart. The remainder of Dorothy's room was shared by seven mothers and twelve children, each group with their own six foot area. Of the 4,000 internees, one-third were children and one-third were over the age of 65.

Fred served on the camp committee and established a camp school. Dorothy was placed in charge of the children's hospital, a 20-cot shack. The ward had a Japanese director and American doctors and nurses. Not a single child was lost while Dorothy was in charge.
On February 3, 1945, the camp got their first indication that liberation may be coming soon. That evening, General Macarthur's Flying Column broke through the Japanese lines. 
On February 11, after even more deaths (including a number of internees) in the skirmish, the Japanese were vanquished and the military began to evacuate the remaining 3,785 remaining internees.

It wasn't until April 19, 1945, that Dorothy, Carol and Bobby left the Philippine Islands for repatriation to the United States. Fred stayed behind to do what he could to reinstate the college, and was reunited with his family in August.