20 Centavos

The United States Armed Forces in the Far East guerrilla currency issues from Samar are among the most locally specific emergency notes produced during the Japanese occupation of the Philippines. The Headquarters Volunteer Service Corps operated in the Eastern Visayas, where isolated commands frequently printed their own scrip simply to maintain a functioning internal economy — paying informants, local suppliers, and auxiliary personnel when no other medium of exchange was available.

Balangiga itself carries a loaded history entirely separate from the occupation: it was the site of the 1901 massacre that triggered one of the most brutal American reprisals of the Philippine-American War. That a U.S.-aligned command chose it as an issuing point four decades later is an unremarked coincidence most catalog entries skip past.

Production was strictly local — hand-typed or mimeographed in most comparable Samar issues, with serial control often minimal.