10 Gulden - Wilhelmina

This note was produced in wartime New York because the Japanese occupation of the Dutch East Indies, which began in early 1942, had entirely severed the colonial government from its territory. The Netherlands Indies Civil Administration and the Dutch government-in-exile arranged printing contracts with the American Bank Note Company for a series of denominations intended for reintroduction once the archipelago was liberated — currency prepared in anticipation of a return, not an ongoing administration.

Repatriation came too late for orderly circulation. The 1943 series arrived in the Indies only in the chaotic final months of the Pacific War and its immediate aftermath, competing almost immediately with Japanese occupation scrip, pre-war Dutch colonial notes, and eventually the entirely new monetary structure imposed by the Indonesian independence movement. Many from this print run never circulated at all.