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The E-Sylum: Volume 12, Number 15, April 12, 2009, Article 10

QUERY: WHERE ARE ADMIRAL NIMITZ'S AUTOGRAPHED HAWAII NOTES?

In the April 6th edition of the MPC GRAM (Series 10, No 1798), Jim Downey published an interesting article based on a personal account of the Military Government of Hawaii which includes an entire chapter on money and banking on the islands. -Editor
Hawaii Note Green was the Executive Officer to the Military Governor of Hawaii. Prior to the declaration of martial law, then Lt. Col. Green was the Chief Judge Advocate in for the Army's Hawaii Department. As the Army's top lawyer in Hawaii, he was largely responsible for the implementation of martial law on the islands. General Green wrote a personal account of the Military Government of Hawaii which includes an entire chapter on money and banking on the islands. This chapter covers the issuing of the Hawaii overprint notes (which the General takes personal credit for creating.) In another part of the book, he details what happened to a select few of the Hawaii notes. The following is an excerpt from the book. The bracketed information are my comments.

Elsewhere in this treatise, reference will be made to the wartime Hawaiian currency known as "Emmons' money," which was substituted for the regular United States currency.

[General Emmons was the Commander of the Hawaii Department as of December 17, 1941 having replaced General Short. General Emmons was the first Military Governor of Hawaii. The Hawaii overprint notes were first issued during General Emmons tenure as Military Governor.]

The only distinguishing marks were overprints indicating that it was currency to be used in Hawaii. I obtained the first four one dollar bills of the Emmons money to be issued in Hawaii by exchanging for it four one dollar bills of regular currency. At my request, General Emmons endorsed his name on all four bills and I did likewise. I then sent all four bills to Admiral Nimitz with the request that he endorse his name on all four bills, retain one for his scrapbook and return the other three to me.

With his reply, dated July 29, 1942, Admiral Nimitz returned all four of the bills, duly endorsed, and stating that he was not including American currency in his scrapbook...

[Your homework, dear readers, is to find these four notes and obtain images of them. General Green's papers are at the Army's Judge Advocate Generals Legal Center and School Library in Charlottesville, VA. The Adjutant General note may be at the Adjutant General Museum at Fort Jackson, SC. If not, the curator should know where to look.

I could find no information on the papers of General Emmons. There is no indication what General Green did with the note intended for Admiral Nimitz. It may still be in his papers in Virginia. For the record, the papers of Admiral Nimitz are at the Operational Archives Branch of the Naval Historical Center at the Washington Navy Yard.]


So, intrepid E-Sylum readers, can anyone assist Jim in his quest? -Editor




Wayne Homren, Editor

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