2 Pesos

The Commonwealth of the Philippines issued this series through its own Treasury — not the Philippine National Bank, which had handled earlier emissions — reflecting the administrative shift as the Commonwealth government asserted tighter fiscal control during the late 1930s. The Bureau of Engraving and Printing in Washington had produced Philippine currency for decades under American colonial administration, and that relationship continued seamlessly into the Commonwealth period.

Notes of this series dated 1941 were printed before the Japanese invasion of December that year. Many were evacuated, destroyed, or captured during the fall of Manila and the subsequent occupation, which accounts for the relative scarcity of circulated survivors in anything better than heavy wear.