I've tracked Department Stores, Machines with Automobile names, female names, patriotic names etc. Any retailer so inclined could have Sewing Machines made just for him or her (Sears Kenmore, Wards Signature). To further complicate matters, large retailers would purchase machines and have the company name on them: RH Macy, Gimbals, etc. Generally speaking, a machine will, somewhere, state 'made in Japan' or have 'JA- ' stamped into the bottom of the machine. Unfortunately, records from these manufactures don't exist, so it is impossible to identify them further. Over 5000 different 'brands' have been identified, manufactured by 15 or so companies. Often they were given American sounding names to appeal to the overseas market. Indeed many of these machines are practically indistinguishable from a Singer and use parts that are interchangeable. The most common of these were based on the Singer Model 15 but there are also Singer 99 clones. Shortly after W.W.II, Japan, with money from the United States, manufactured a large number of sewing machines.
