April-December 1977, Vol. 3, No.s 2-4 - International Philippine ...

Fig. 2
01 olficial cover of the Japanese Occupation of the Philippines. Rarely. that peek-u rewarded with the discovery
of a "turned cover"; Le., a cover used twice for the enclosure and mailing of a letter. Eapccially
in the provincial towns outside Manila. a severe shortage of office supplies, including envelopes, made it
prudent and necessary to practice conservation whenever possible. One method was to tum a once-wed
envelope inside-out. very carefully. so as to expose Ute unused inside for I'll-we.
After that one quick look inside the illustrated cover. a telephone caD to Mr. Ashmore elicited hiJ most
generous pennission to slit open the ends of the cover t4.9 reveal fully the fll'lt-ud face (Figure 2). In spite
of its general nondescript appeamace. with the "outlawed" Commonwealth stamp peeled off, it was imme>
diateIy apparent that an extraordinary discovery had been made. The Baybay. Leyte. postmark... is dated
April 3. 7 AM. Although the year date is missing, it is certainly 1942, since postal cenSQrhiQ.did_ not exist
in the PhiliE.pines until after the outbreak of war. The addressee is the self-same "Division Superintendent
of Schootsrracloban, Leyte", who became the sender of the cover upon its second usage. The truly exciting
discovery is the black handstamped censor mark of a type previously unknown to me and, 10 far as I
can detennine, previously unreported and unmentioned in the literature of the period.
Fig. 3
m the actual size illustration (Figure 3), it.can be seen that thet mark is, regretably, only partially legible.
In the rust line, the inscrir.tion "CENSORED" is quite clear, but the ~ption which follows is badly
smudged: it seems to read OR 7", with the intervening number (I) or letter (I) totally iDegible. The second
line pIobably ",ad, "BY
", with the blank line pIovided fOI the black pen-and-lnlt
signature, monogram or initials of the individual censor; in this example, the inscription is clear but indecipherable.
The rubber stamp is apparently of local manufacture. undoubtedly hand-made to meet the emergency
need for such a device. It remains to be determined whether the censorship was accomplished by a
civilian or military cenlOr, since the local Commonwealth Government officials were subject to the martial
law which General MacArthur had declared after the rust aerial attacks by the Japanese on December 8,
1941.
The discovery of the censor· mark under discussion would seem to open a hitherto littJe-known and previously
unexplored period of Philippines postal history. It seems reuonable to assume that other similar
censored covers of the period have survived, perhaps unrecognized by their present owners u to their great
rarity and historical interest. It is hoped that other examples, from Leyte u weD u from the many other
provinces which remained unoccupied for some time after the fall of Manila, wiD be reported for recording
in the permanent literuure of the postalhistory of the Philippines.
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