Under a coinage law that Congress approved on March 2, 1903, the Philippine Islands received their own money under United States rule, valued at two pesos to the American dollar. The one centavo was its bronze coin for everyday change. Melecio Figueroa, a Filipino sculptor and engraver, won the design competition: a young man seated at an anvil, the volcano Mount Mayon trailing smoke in the background.
Philadelphia struck the first centavos, dated 1903 to 1905, along with the proofs for the Philippine sets of 1903-1906 and 1908. San Francisco was cleared to strike base-metal coins for the islands in 1908 and made every centavo from 1908-S to 1920-S, each with a small S. In 1920 the Manila Mint, the former Spanish colonial mint, reopened as a branch of the United States Mint, the first outside the continental United States. Its centavos of 1920, 1921 and 1922 carry no mint mark; from 1925 they have an M. No centavos are dated 1923, 1924 or 1935.
With the creation of the Commonwealth of the Philippines, the reverse took the Commonwealth arms from 1937, based on the seal designed by Ambrosio Morales. Manila struck the new type until 1941. After Japan took the islands, the San Francisco Mint struck 58,000,000 centavos dated 1944 while Manila was occupied, by the Director of the Mint's calendar-year record. The same series of reports lists a further 78,485,798 one-centavo pieces struck for the Philippines at San Francisco during 1945, although no centavo dated 1945 is catalogued; the reports do not say which date those coins carry.
