"I'll never forget this," he said.
Clinton also fought back tears as he spoke to reporters after receiving a similar drawing from another child of Ban Namkhem, where an estimated 1,500-2,000 people - more than a third of the village - died when the wave crashed ashore.
The tsunami may have killed 300,000 people around the Indian Ocean, prompting President George W. Bush to appoint his father and Clinton to lead US fund-raising for survivors across the region. Clinton, who is also a special UN envoy for tsunami aid, estimated that roughly another $4 billion was needed to help the survivors put their lives back together and appealed for world media to keep the spotlight on the disaster.
"That's the number one problem: that we will just forget these people. What we have to do is not to forget... see this thing through," he said.
The relief work in Thailand, where the presidential pair began their lightning four-nation tour, has turned from providing emergency aid and recovering bodies to costly reconstruction.
Thai troops were building dozens of houses of concrete and steel in Ban Namkhem. Almost wiped off the map on December 26, the village was a hive of activity. Battered fishing boats sat among the buildings going up, ready for repairs funded by US aid. Once fierce political rivals, 80-year-old Republican Bush and Democrat Clinton said tsunami relief was above politics.
"You are almost in tears when you see this little girl here. It gets way beyond politics," Bush said at Ban Namkhem. The pair, who fly on Sunday to Indonesia's Aceh province, the worst-hit area, are striving to keep attention on the disaster and encourage Americans and US firms to keep giving.
Private donors world-wide are estimated to have given over $2 billion so far in relief aid. Total private and government aid commitments total $7 billion, Clinton said, still short of total tsunami losses estimated at $11-12 billion.
He estimated that about half of private US donations for tsunami relief had been channelled via the Internet, which emerged during the crisis as a prodigious source of funds. Clinton and Bush plan to keep the computer mice clicking.
Clinton, who is making his most gruelling journey since undergoing quadruple-bypass heart surgery recently, said donor fatigue had yet to set in but the danger was there, explaining it could take two years before devastated areas returned to normal.
"We have to get countries to honour the commitments they have already made," he said after a meeting with Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra on the resort island of Phuket, south of Ban Namkhem.