Philippines: Postal Issues of the Japanese Occupation

This book started with a generous gift by Sebastian Baldassarre of Japanese occupation stamps to my collection on WWII at Filipinas Heritage Library. Many occupation stamps were based on pre-war Philippine stamps overprinted and surcharged in black by the Japanese Administration. I became curious to know how these stamps looked without the overprints. The more I delved, the more fascinating the subject became. Thus this book, limited to stamps issued by the Japanese Military Administration during the occupation of the Philippines, together with the same stamps as they appeared both before and after the occupation.

The book lists the stamps issued during the occupation by category and date of first issue except the first series designed and printed in Japan. Released on six occasions over a period of a year, they are grouped together. Second overprintings are listed under the original release date. Appendix I shows the stamps as issued under colonial and Commonwealth administrations during the 1930s. Appendix II shows stamps provisionally hand-stamped VICTORY issued in Leyte soon after the landings in October 1944 and the VICTORY - COMMONWEALTH stamps issued to celebrate the liberation. This book has required much detail. All errors and omissions are mine.

Most of the stamps in this booklet are fairly easy to acquire, except for those hand stamped VICTORY. These are hard to fi nd and expensive as so few were hand stamped. Fortunately, good scans are available of all the overprinted stamps.

(Roderick Hall)