***I’ve read that during and after WWII Americans refused to buy anything made in Japan.***
After WWII anything shipped to the USA from Japan was trash. I’ve read that the Japanese could not understand why Americans wanted such trash they would not even sell in Japan.
It was not till about 1966 that the Japanese upped their export standards and good stuff started flowing into the US.
In the early fifties as a pre-Schooler I had a cheap dime store stamped metal cap pistol. Being a curious lad,I pried the shiny metal tabs to see the guts. The inside faces were still painted with the Schlitz logo.
GI beer cans recycled into cap guns.