Customs officials in Japan appealed for the owners of bank notes, stock certificates and foreign currency seized by occupying forces at the end of World War II to come forward. After nearly seven decades, around 870,000 items confiscated by customs under on the orders of the Allied Forces were still being kept while they wait for some 268,000 legal owners to claim them. Occupiers, led by US General Douglas MacArthur, who controlled Japan until 1952, limited inflows of assets amid fears of hyperinflation and economic chaos if the flood of returnees brought with them large amounts of liquid assets. Hundreds of thousands of Japanese came back to their defeated country when the Imperial Japanese Army was ejected from China, the Korean peninsula and other parts of the empire. Those that returned had stock certificates, wills, deposit books, Japanese cash and foreign currency temporarily seized on arrival. In 1953, after inflation fears subsided, the Japanese government began returning the items to their owners, but “we are still holding nearly 870,000 items as their owners have yet to pick them up,” said a customs official. “We hope all the belongings will be returned to their owners as soon as possible,” the official said, adding that customs is technically required to keep them “indefinitely” until their owners claim them. No value was given for the assets still being held, although many items, including currency issued by the Dutch East Indies or Imperial Japan will now be worthless.
