1 Peso

The Mindanao Emergency Currency Board was one of several provincial and municipal emergency currency authorities that sprang up across the Philippine islands after the Japanese occupation severed normal banking and supply chains. These locally issued guerrilla notes were explicitly backed by the authority of the Philippine Commonwealth government-in-exile and, by extension, the United States — a deliberate political statement as much as a monetary necessity.

Mindanao's remoteness and active guerrilla resistance meant these notes circulated in genuinely contested territory. Japanese forces treated possession of such notes as evidence of collaboration with resistance networks, making ordinary commerce with them a calculated risk.

Three signatories is slightly unusual for emergency issues of this type; most boards operated with two authorized signatures.