50 Cents Camp Ashby; PoW Camp

Camp Ashby was a World War II prisoner of war facility in Virginia, one of hundreds of temporary camps established across the American interior under the Geneva Convention framework, which required that prisoners be paid for labor in scrip redeemable only within the camp system — not in U.S. currency. This note is that scrip. The arrangement was deliberate: camp money prevented escape funds from accumulating and kept prisoner economies self-contained.

Sick & Bischoff catalog reference S&B#1056 places this within the documented Virginia camp issues. These notes were produced cheaply and destroyed in bulk at war's end, which makes intact survivors genuinely uncommon despite the large prisoner populations most camps held.