Full soft pack with 4 cigarettes in a colorful paper wrapping and a cellophane wrapper with the flags of the USA and the Philippines and with MacArthur's name, signature and slogan.
In August 1943, Colonel Courtney Whitney proposed distributing propaganda items with General Douglas MacArthur's famous promise «I Shall Return» to the native population in the Japanese-occupied Philippines. The Office of War Information classified the project as top secret and commissioned the Larus & Bro. Tobacco Company to produce the items, which had previously won a contract to provide Chelsea Cigarettes for soldiers' field rations. These included «I Shall Return» cigarettes, matchbooks, matchboxes and mirrored reflectors for aircraft signaling. They were smuggled behind enemy lines by the U.S. submarine Narwhal and dropped at night by B-24 Liberator bombers and distributed by American and Filipino guerrillas. These cigarettes helped to keep hope of liberation alive among the Filipinos until General MacArthur's return.
