1000 Francs

Banque de l'Indochine's wartime 1000 Francs series presents a genuinely complicated production history. Following the fall of France in 1940, the bank's note supply became a logistical problem — French printing facilities were unavailable, and the occupied metropole could not be trusted. American Bank Note Company in New York stepped in, printing colonial currency for a territory under Japanese military occupation from March 1945 onward.

The notes reached Indochina too late for normal pre-occupation distribution. Some P#14 examples show evidence of limited or interrupted circulation precisely because the political situation on the ground had already collapsed by the time supplies arrived.