1 Peso

The Leyte Emergency Currency Board was one of several provincial bodies authorized by the Philippine Commonwealth government-in-exile to produce guerrilla currency after the Japanese occupation severed normal banking operations. These notes circulated in the Visayas alongside Japanese Military Pesos, which the occupation authorities declared legal tender — holding or using guerrilla currency was a punishable offense under Japanese military law.

Production was strictly local, with whatever paper and ink could be sourced. The crude printing quality that characterizes S394 is a direct consequence of wartime improvisation, not a design choice. Tacloban would later become the landing site of MacArthur's October 1944 return, after which guerrilla scrip lost its practical necessity almost overnight.