5 Pesos

The Province of Cagayan issued this note under Japanese occupation as part of the guerrilla currency network that proliferated across the Philippine islands after the fall of Bataan in April 1942. Provincial and local governments, cut off from Manila and facing a complete collapse of normal banking, resorted to printing their own emergency scrip to keep local commerce functioning — the Japanese-issued Military Pesos were deeply distrusted, and communities actively preferred locally issued paper.

Cagayan, in the far north of Luzon, remained a center of resistance activity throughout the occupation, which gave these notes a volatile lifespan. Many were deliberately destroyed when Japanese forces swept through an area to prevent them being used as evidence of organized resistance.