Foreign Currency Identification Help
 

Are there any currency collectors here?

While sorting through family photos and memorabilia I found an envelope of old Japanese currency that my father-in-law had. For context, he was in the US Navy at the very end of WWII and the early part of the occupation of Japan. I'd like to identify them for my wife.

I am looking for websites, discussion groups, or social media pages that can help me identify what they are. I tried using CoPilot AI and it told me that the first note, which was clearly labeled 1 Yen, was a Mexican 10 peso note. When I pointed out that it was clearly Japanese currency, CoPilot told me that it must have been scrip that circulated amongst the Chinese immigrant community in Mexico. So, any direction you can provide would be greatly appreciated.

Here is that diez peso note.

Attachment 677045

Lots on eBay for a few dollars each.

https://en.numista.com/203393

US currency used to pay members of the military. I this case, in yen so they could be spent in whatever business would accept it.
There was probably some mechanism where the locals could exchange it for their own currency, but if I knew about it I've forgotten it.

During the war they used regular dollar denominations. The benefit was that if a bunch was captured the series could be cancelled and new notes issued. Something that couldn't be done with regular US currency (except the Hawaii notes which never needed to be cancelled )

Also known as Allied Military Currency (AMC) used in occupied Germany and Japan, for example each occupied zone in Germany by the Allies was designated by the first number 1=US 0=British 00=French, the Russians printed their own being similar.
The AMC currency for Germany was printed by Forbes Lithographic for the US, British & French

Suck it, AI! Nothing beats good old fashioned experience and knowledge.

I can tell you that it's in Chinese, and at the top it says "1 yuan".

The bottom also says "jun1 piao4", which means a military ticket, or probably scrip in this case.

However, Japanese tends to steal a lot from Chinese (they call it kanji, and the Chinese call it hanzi), so there's always some possibility that this could also be Japanese, although I'm skeptical of that possibility here.

And I suppose that I can also note that it uses the fancy version for 1, that is used for checks and currency, since the boring version for 1 is just a horizontal line, which is easily manipulated to be just about any amount for enterprising souls.

And in case you're wondering, the Chinese at the top and bottom reads from right to left, which is the traditional Chinese method of writing. Somewhat excitingly, historically they wrote from top to bottom, right to left, and the back of the book to the front, so very different than our approach. But more recently, they've adopted our approach to using left to right, top to bottom, and front of the book to the back of the book.