Delos Carleton Emmons was a lieutenant general in the United States Army. He was the military governor of Hawaii in the aftermath of the Attack on Pearl Harbor and administered the replacement of normal U.S. banknotes with special war-emergency US banknotes in case the islands were invaded. He is credited with preventing the mass evacuation of Japanese-Americans from Hawaii, which many have called a shameful episode of racism and jingoism that was felt hardest on the mainland.

A Hawaii overprint note is one of a series of banknotes issued during World War II as an emergency issue after the attack on Pearl Harbor. The intent of the overprints was to easily distinguish United States dollars captured by the Imperial Japanese Armed Forces in the event of an invasion of Hawaii and render the notes worthless. Although a sizeable number of the notes were recalled and destroyed after the end of World War II, many escaped destruction and exist as collectibles of numismatic interest in the present day.