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25 Cents Stockton; PoW Camp
| Issuer | Prisoner of War Canteen, Stockton, California |
|---|---|
| Year | 1944-1946 |
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| Reference(s) | Camb#8521 |
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|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | PRISONERS OF WAR CANTEEN Stockton, Calif. VOID IF DETACHED 25 CENTS PW |
| Reverse description | Reverse entirely unprinted, presenting a plain buff paper surface with no text, vignette, or security elements. |
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| Comments |
American prisoner of war camps operated their own internal canteen scrip systems during the war to prevent German and Italian prisoners from accumulating U.S. currency that could theoretically aid escape. The Stockton camp, formally a branch of a larger California internment network, issued denominations in cents rather than dollars — a deliberate policy to keep individual note values too low for practical use outside the wire.
The Geneva Convention of 1929 required that PoW laborers be paid, which created the scrip necessity in the first place. Stockton-series notes are among the more obscure California camp issues, and survival rates are low — most were redeemed and pulped at the war's end.