10 Centavos

Philippine municipal emergency notes issued during the Japanese occupation are among the most historically specific paper money from the Second World War. The Municipality of Oras, on the eastern coast of Samar, was one of dozens of local governments that printed their own fractional scrip after the Japanese military administration disrupted the existing currency supply — and after the Commonwealth government evacuated to the mountains, taking what liquidity it could.

These municipal issues were authorized locally out of necessity, not by any central banking authority, and their legal standing was always ambiguous. Oras scrip circulated within an extremely limited geographic and temporal window.