2 Pesos

Guiuan sits at the southeastern tip of Samar, and in 1943 it was deep inside Japanese-occupied territory. Municipal emergency notes like this one were produced by local Philippine governments to keep commerce moving after the Japanese military administration disrupted the existing currency supply. The printing was entirely local — no professional press, no security features worth speaking of — which accounts for the enormous variation in paper quality, ink consistency, and hand-signing across surviving examples.

Guiuan would later become the staging point for MacArthur's October 1944 Leyte Gulf landings. Notes from this specific municipality rarely surface.