Banana notes

An intriguing period in Penang's past was the time of the Japanese Occupation. Penang fell to the invading Japanese army on 11 December 1941 and it was not until 15 August 1945 that the Pacific War ended. The formal instrument of surrender was signed in Penang on 2 September 1945.

When I was writing the history of Penang Free School in 2015 and 2016, I was trying my hardest to find out about the Occupation days in Penang: what actually happened in the days, weeks, months leading up to the invasion, and what happened to the school and the people associated with it. I found out quite a bit and a lot went into the book. Whatever was relevant to Penang Free School went into the book.

Now, I have another writing project to complete and again, I've to delve into the period of the Japanese Occupation. It was quite a traumatic yet exciting period, actually, for those who lived through it. In Singapore, the National Archives there had the foresight in the 1980s to talk with their senior citizens to extract memories of the War from them. Not so in Penang, there is little opportunity to find out what happened, how our people suffered. It's too late  to seek out the survivors of the Japanese Occupation that ended 75 years ago; they would be too old to remember anything now. What a waste.

A part of our history that interested me were the currency notes that the Japanese Military introduced: the so-called banana notes because the $10 note featured an image of a bunch of bananas hanging down from a banana tree trunk. The first batch of banana notes introduced into Occupied Malaya, including Singapore, bore serial numbers but the later batches did not. It was a typical case of printing money. Soon the banana notes flooded the country and caused inflation to rocket sky high.

Almost immediately after the War ended and the British Military took over Malaya and Singapore, it was estimated that as much as $750,000,000 in Japanese currency notes was in circulation. By October, a clearer picture emerged. The Japanese themselves estimated that between 7,000 and 8,000 million worth of Japanese notes were issued, and all became worthless after the British Military Administration refused to recognise them as legal tender. As a matter of fact, vast fortunes were lost when the banana notes became worthless.

There was a curious story that appeared in The Straits Times on 08 September 1945. Referring to the banana notes, the writer wrote that the Malays had given the currency a "peculiarly expressive name which is unfortunately unprintable." I posted this story to a Down Memory Lane facebook page to invite comments from the other members. For most part, nobody seemed to know anything at all and frankly, I was getting a little exasperated. Surely, someone would know? Fortunately, someone did venture a plausible explanation and I'd like to think that he was correct. According to the reply given, "If you look at the Japanese Dollar Note then... You can see a bunch of bananas hanging from the tree. In Malay this is termed as Batang Pisang Berjuntai or a rod hanging down...which is a derogatory remark. In the same tone, some might have added other obscene names for the infamous worthless currency."

So there you have it: batang pisang berjuntai. Rude enough, derogatory enough to warrant blushes in the newsroom of The Straits Times in 1945.