The result was a publisher's contract sent to Wouk's ship, then off the coast of Okinawa. Wouk sent a copy of the opening chapters to Irwin Edman who quoted a few pages verbatim to a New York editor. He started writing a novel, Aurora Dawn, during off-duty hours aboard ship. Wouk joined the United States Navy and served in the Pacific Theater, an experience he later characterized as educational 'I learned about machinery, I learned how men behaved under pressure, and I learned about Americans.' Wouk served as an officer aboard two destroyer minesweepers (DMS), the USS Zane and USS Southard, becoming executive officer of the latter.

He lived a fairly secular lifestyle in his early 20s before deciding to return to a more traditional Jewish way of life, modeled after that of his grandfather, in his mid-20s. Soon thereafter, he became a radio dramatist, working in David Freedman's 'Joke Factory' and later with Fred Allen for five years and then, in 1941, for the United States government, writing radio spots to sell war bonds. from Columbia University in 1934, where he was a member of the Pi Lambda Phi fraternity and studied under philosopher Irwin Edman. After a childhood and adolescence in the Bronx and a high school diploma from Townsend Harris High School, he earned a B.A. Herman Wouk was born in New York City into a Jewish family that had emigrated from Russia. Herman Wouk was a bestselling, Pulitzer Prize-winning Jewish American author with a number of notable novels to his credit, including The Caine Mutiny, The Winds of War, and War and Remembrance.

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