1 Peso

Cagayan's wartime emergency issues emerged from the chaos following the Japanese invasion of the Philippines in late 1941. Provincial governments, cut off from Manila and facing a complete collapse of normal currency supply, were authorized under emergency powers to print their own notes to keep local commerce functioning. Cagayan was among the provinces that acted quickly.

The revenue stamp used as a security feature is a pragmatic improvisation — standard fiscal stamps repurposed to authenticate currency because proper security printing materials were simply unavailable. This kind of cross-use of existing government stock is a recurring feature of Philippine guerrilla and provincial emergency issues, and its presence here confirms the note was produced under genuine wartime constraint rather than as a speculative or commemorative issue.