Bob Toole

Toole was born in Spokane, Washington around 1935. By 1940, he and his family moved to Van Nuys, California, where he spent his entire childhood. In 1954, he graduated from Brigham Young University and enlisted in the U.S. military in August of that year. Toole underwent basic training at Fort Ord, California, before being stationed in Yokohama, Japan, in February 1955. Toole served as the clerk typist at the Yokohama Engineer Depot for Detachment C of the 8056th army unit before being promoted to Specialist Third Class in June 1956.

In 1957, after being discharged from the military, Toole moved back to Van Nuys, and then to Ventura, California. In 1959, Toole was a Ventura College student and claimed in a letter to the editor of the Ventura County Star that he had "returned from study and teaching in Hong Kong." By the end of the year, he had left California.

In 1961, Toole had moved to London to study Chinese art and culture at London University for a year. Toole and his romantic partner Lily Holden (of whom it is unclear when he met) then decided to move to Hong Kong for a planned two years, after which they planned to hitchhike across Asia. Leading up to this, the couple had a brief excursion in Singapore with two Japanese friends. This trip to Singapore is detailed in an article in the Singapore Free Press from January 18 1962; the article also claimed that, since 1959, Toole and his partner (described erroneously in the article as his wife Lily and Mrs. Toole) had "visited nine countries in Europe and Asia" and that they spent "three months in New Dehli teaching Tibetan refugee children English, geography and mathematics."