Bodo Zimmermann was born in Berlin, Germany, on March 20^th, 1928. His parents owned a successful department store, but in 1939 the store and their home were confiscated by Nazi officials. The family planned to open a new store in China, but after relocating to Shanghai in June of 1940 learned that the merchandise purchased with the last of their money had also been confiscated.

Zimmermann dropped out of school at 13 to become an apprentice at a pastry shop. He and his family were interned by the Japanese at Ward Road Camp in Shanghai from 1942 to 1945. At age 17, Zimmermann got a job as a baker on the American ship USS LCI 220 from February to April 1946 shipping hospital supplies up the Yangtze River from Shanghai to Chungking. He then worked as a baker on multiple ships and at bakeries before permanently settling down in the United States in 1949.

Zimmermann served in the US military in Germany during the 1950s, and then as a government employee of the military operating all of the commissary bakeries in Japan and Korea. In 1968 he began work as a salesman for a low-moisture food company, Vacu-Dry, where he retired as vice president of sales in 1990. Zimmermann married his wife Helen Gohstand in the early 1950s, and they had two children, Allen and Audrey.