Apr 15, 2023
New puzzler time. And this puzzler has to do with my brother's favorite state, Hawaii.
Here we go.
Many, many, many years ago the United States Mint made money, paper currency, you know 10s, 20s, dollar bills... with the word 'Hawaii' printed on the back of the bill. Big letters over all the other printing, as if someone had taken a rubber stamp and just added it to each bill.
Now, this was done before Hawaii became a state, so it was a long time ago. Hawaii became a state in 1959, so this was happening before that time. So when this was happening, Hawaii was a territory and they were using American currency. And these bills were in circulation before Hawaii became a state.
And the question is, why was this done?
No cheating and using Google now. Honest answers only!
Good luck.
Answer time for this puzzler.
So, why would the United States have made paper money and then stamped the word 'Hawaii' across all of them?
And here is the answer.
They did it because at that time, World War 2 was about to start.
And at that time, they were afraid that Hawaii would be occupied by the Japanese. And the Japanese would then be able to their confiscate the money and use it to buy things, maybe even armaments, from neutral countries with our own money. So they stamped them all with the word 'Hawaii' so that if the territory ever got occupied, any money that said 'Hawaii' on it would be no good.
So, in this way, the currency would be declared invalid and the occupied country could not use it against us.
And there you have it.
