Jim Dmitri Krenov was born on October 31, 1920, in the village of Uelen, Chukotka, the only child of Dimitri and Julia Krenov. He and his family left Russia the following year, and after some time in Shanghai, China, they moved to a remote village in Alaska, where his parents worked as teachers. They lived in Alaska for seven years. Jim remembered airplane drops of goods and supplies onto the snow for the villagers. In one of those bundles was a good steel jack-knife. "From the time I was 6, I was making my own toys with the jackknife," Jim told. "It was a joy to me that I could rely on my hands and my eyes to produce things." Eventually, the family moved to Seattle. Jim spent his teen years there, where he developed a love for the sea and began building model boats at first, graduating to sailboats before long. As a young man during World War II, Krenov served as a Russian interpreter for the military when Russian ships docked in Seattle. He also worked for a ship chandler and spent a great deal of time surrounded by boats. It influenced his aesthetic. He loved the lines of boats: "There's hardly a straight line on them, but there's harmony. People think right angles produce harmony, but they don't. They produce sleep," Krenov said.