1 Baht - Rama VIII Series 5, type I Thai serial bottom

Thailand's wartime alignment with Japan made this note possible — and politically loaded. With European printers inaccessible and the country under a de facto Japanese sphere of influence following the December 1941 agreement that allowed Japanese troop transit, Bangkok turned to Tokyo's National Printing Bureau to produce emergency currency. The arrangement was purely practical, but it made Thailand the only non-Japanese territory to have its domestic banknotes manufactured at that facility during the war.

The Type I designation refers to the serial number placement, with Thai-script serials running along the bottom — a configuration replaced in later printings. P#44 is frequently encountered with toning along the folds, a known characteristic attributed to the paper stock used by the Japanese bureau during wartime material constraints.