20 Pesos

The Mindanao Emergency Currency Board was one of several guerrilla currency authorities operating in the southern Philippines during the Japanese occupation, issuing notes to sustain a parallel economy outside Japanese military scrip. These provincial emergency issues were explicitly illegal under the occupation administration — possession could bring severe consequences — yet they circulated openly in areas where guerrilla networks maintained effective control.

Mindanao's geography made suppression difficult. The island's size and terrain allowed resistance authorities to function with unusual persistence through 1943 and into 1944, which gave these notes a longer active circulation life than most Philippine emergency issues. Notes that survived the war often did so hidden in walls, buried, or carried out by returning servicemen.