50 Centavos

Guiuan sits at the southeastern tip of Samar, and in 1943 it was under Japanese occupation. This note is a product of that disruption — local Philippine municipal governments, cut off from Manila and from any functioning central monetary authority, issued their own emergency guerrilla or occupation-period scrip to keep local commerce moving. Whether this particular issue was sanctioned by Filipino resistance forces or produced under Japanese-supervised civilian administration is a distinction that matters: guerrilla currency was technically illegal under occupation law and carried real risk for anyone caught holding it.

Municipal scrip of this type was printed on whatever paper was locally available, typically by hand or with rudimentary equipment. Survival rates are low.