Yep. "Japanese Invasion Money" or JIM was printed by Japan during WWII, for use by the civilian population in the occupied territories. There were five different series, for each of the regions conquered by Japan:
- Oceania (former British Pacific territories ie. New Guinea and Solomon Islands): block prefix "O", denominated in shillings and pounds.
- Malaya (former British SE Asian territories ie Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei): block prefix "M", denominated in cents and dollars.
- Burma (Former British Indian territories): block prefix "B", denominated in cents and rupees.
- Shonan (the Japanese name for the former Dutch East Indies, now Indonesia): block prefix "S", Dutch or Indonesian language, denominated in cents and gulden or in roepiah.
- Philippines (former American territory): block prefix "P", denominated in centavos and pesos.
So a JIM note, printed in English but denominated in "cents", could be from either Burma or Malaya. The difference will be in the block letters, two letters stamped on the note in place of (or as well as) a serial number: Malayan notes begin with "M", Burmese notes begin with "B". If these notes all came from the same place, then I suspect they will be Burma notes, because the "1/4 rupee" note is definitely Burma.
These notes only have collector value, as they were all deemed worthless after the war ended. Their value to a collector will depend greatly on their condition: many were souvenired by soldiers after the war, but many of these souvenired notes were not carefully looked after. Few were kept by locals as they were for the most part happy to see the Japanese gone - except in the Philippines, where a lobby group collected up as much JIM as they could and then tried to pursue the Japanese government in court to try to redeem the notes for full face value.
Don't say "infinitely" when you mean "very"; otherwise, you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite. - C. S. Lewis
to CCF.
Posted 07/20/2017 3:23 pm
