How it started
History
It was founded in 1948 by order of the U.S. military administration of Okinawa to serve as a central bank for occupied Okinawa, and was originally modeled after the Federal Reserve System of the United States and the Central Bank of the Philippines. During the U.S. administration, it was empowered to issue currency and oversee the financial administration of Okinawa in addition to serving as a commercial and retail bank. Following the repatriation of Okinawa in 1972, it was reorganized as a regional bank. It had an initial public offering on the Tokyo Stock Exchange in 1983.
From Wikipedia’s article on Bank of the Ryukyus, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.2