Catalog
1 Peso
| Issuer | Commonwealth of the Philippines, Bureau of Health - Culion Leper Colony |
|---|---|
| Year | 1942 |
| Type | Standard circulation banknote |
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|---|---|
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| Reverse description | Plain, largely blank reverse with a violet handstamp applied in the centre reading "THE GOVERNMENT OF THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS" with additional lines referencing the Civil Affairs Administration and Bureau of Health. The remainder of the surface is unprinted. |
| Reverse lettering | THE GOVERNMENT OF THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS Civil Affairs Administration Bureau of Health |
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| Comments |
Culion, in the Calamian Islands of Palawan, housed one of the largest leprosy colonies in the world — at its peak in the 1920s, over 5,000 patients were confined there under a policy of mandatory segregation enforced by the American colonial administration. The colony operated its own internal currency specifically to prevent Philippine pesos from leaving the island and potentially entering general circulation. This series continued under the Commonwealth government, and the 1942 date places it squarely in the Japanese invasion year — an extraordinary moment for any bureaucratic institution to be issuing its own scrip.
Whether this issue actually circulated among patients during the occupation, or was printed just before the collapse of Commonwealth authority, remains genuinely unclear. The colony itself continued to function under Japanese control.