Wesley Dodds was born a "Jewish-Catholic" in the 1910's to wealthy investor Edward Dodds and his wife Marina. In 1917 when he was still a child, his mother died while his father was away fighting in the First World War. Wes spent his youth with his father travelling the Orient and there learned herbalism, martial arts, and origami. After college he wished to become a writer but with his father's death Wesley became the manager of his vast estate and to manage and maintain it he became an investor and businessman. In the early 1930s, he served in the U.S. Navy as a pilot