🔧 This vintage 1960s “BUY AMERICAN NOT JAPAN – MADE IN U.S.A.” pinback button is a bold little time capsule from the early days of imported competition and “Buy American” campaigns. Made by Wesco of Indianapolis, Indiana for a Westinghouse Electric promotion, it’s a large 2¼‑inch tin‑litho pin with strong red, white, and blue graphics and a crossed‑out Japanese flag in the center.

🧰 Across the top, big block letters shout “BUY AMERICAN NOT,” while the center shows the Japanese flag in a box, struck through with heavy black lines, and the bottom reads “JAPAN – MADE IN U.S.A.” in red and blue. In the 1950s and 1960s, as Japanese radios, televisions, and appliances began arriving in American stores at lower prices, companies like Westinghouse and their workers launched “Buy American” efforts to push back against the new competition.

📚 Historically, this sits between wartime morale pieces like Westinghouse’s famous “We Can Do It!” poster and the broader “Buy American” movements of the 1970s and 80s. By the 1960s the concern had shifted from winning the war to keeping factory orders and jobs from moving overseas, and this pin turns that anxiety into a simple wearable slogan—making it a fascinating piece of trade, labor, and advertising history all at once.

🎖 At 2¼ inches, the button has real presence compared with smaller campaign pins, and this example is new old stock (NOS): colors are bright, the surface is clean, and the pinback is straight and ready for use. It looks great on a denim jacket, mechanic’s shirt, hat, bag, or work apron, and it also displays beautifully in a shadowbox with other union, political, or company pins.

🧷 You will receive one original vintage 1960s Wesco “Buy American Not Japan – Made in U.S.A.” pinback button, approximately 2¼ inches, in clean, bright NOS, unused condition—authentic mid‑century American industrial and political ephemera ready to wear or display.