10 Yuan Bank of Pei Hai

The Bank of Pei Hai was a Communist-administered regional bank operating under the Shandong-Jiangsu Border Region government during the final years of the Second Sino-Japanese War. It issued notes to finance military and civilian operations in territory contested — sometimes day to day — between Japanese forces, Nationalist units, and the Eighth Route Army. Currency issued in this environment rarely survived in quantity; notes circulated hard, often in areas with no banking infrastructure whatsoever, and redemption after 1949's currency unification swept most of them out of existence.

The 1945 date places this note in the last surge of wartime issue, just before Japan's surrender collapsed the immediate military need for regional scrip.