2 Cents Pryor PoW Canteen

Pryor, Oklahoma was the site of a large prisoner of war compound attached to the Pryor Works, a massive munitions plant built in 1941 under the Defense Plant Corporation. German POWs held there were permitted limited purchasing power within the camp canteen system — scrip like this replaced U.S. currency as required under the Geneva Convention, which prohibited the use of official money in POW facilities. The Army issued canteen coupons in denominations calibrated to the token wages paid to working prisoners: 10 cents per day for enlisted men, 80 cents for officers.

The Pryor series is among the more localized and short-lived of the American POW scrip issues, tied directly to a single industrial site that was already winding down by late 1945.