10 Centavos

Hilongos is a municipality on the western coast of Leyte, and this note belongs to the broad category of Philippine emergency circulating notes (ECNs) produced by local governments, municipalities, and guerrilla units during the Japanese occupation. With the Commonwealth peso effectively disrupted and Japanese Military Pesos imposed by force, hundreds of local authorities improvised their own currency to keep small transactions functional.

Municipal ECNs from Leyte are among the more documented in the Philippine series, though surviving examples at the centavo denominations — the small change tier — are disproportionately scarce. They circulated hard and were worth almost nothing after the war ended.