Unable to resist a strong urge to travel and understand the world, he joined the Pacific Mail Steamship Company as a clerk in Yokohama, Japan.

Chennault is best known for coordinating the OSS-bankrolled American Volunteer Group (better known as the "Flying Tigers") to bring the fight to the Japanese without a declaration of war and return Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek to dominance in China.

In 2000, war correspondent and author Mark Fritz wrote in the article entitled The Secret (Insurance) Agent Men for the Los Angeles Times: They knew which factories to burn, which bridges to blow up, which cargo ships could be sunk in good conscience.

These undercover underwriters gave their World War II spymasters access to a global industry that both bankrolled and, ultimately, helped bring down Adolf Hitler's Third Reich.

AIG left China in early 1949, as Mao led the advance of the Communist People's Liberation Army on Shanghai,[7][8] and Starr moved the company headquarters to its current home in New York City.

[10] In 1955 he founded the C. V. Starr Foundation, to which he left his entire residuary estate, after a small amount in the eight figures along with his home in Brewster was awarded to his niece upon his death in 1968.

[12] Students at Hofstra University will know C.V. Starr Hall as home to the Frank G. Zarb School of Business, a state-of-the-art technologically advanced building, which opened for classes in the fall of 2000 and houses the Martin B. Greenberg Trading Room complete with a stock ticker that is delayed only 15 minutes from Wall Street.