1 Cent Oahu; PoW Camp

U.S. Army prisoner of war camp scrip occupies a genuinely odd corner of American military monetary history. The Oahu issues were produced for use within the camp system under War Department directives requiring that POWs be compensated for labor — a Geneva Convention obligation the U.S. took seriously enough to create dedicated currency for. The scrip kept prisoners from accumulating U.S. currency that could facilitate escape or be used outside the wire.

The 1945–46 dating places this squarely in the late-war and immediate postwar demobilization period, when the camps were winding down and many notes were destroyed with them. Survivor quantities are low for that reason, not because of small print runs.