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Snap! Mine's another 83 JV, a '62 model. Its suffered through various ignominies in the 20 years I've had it but I think its looking pretty good right now. The common story is that they shamed the US factoy into upping their standards at the time, though that might be wishful thinking on the part of owners!
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stappard
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Nice. The story is, apparently the US staff went over to the Fujigen factory to check out the production and the guitars coming off the line and they 'wept' (probably didn't do that), for they could not make guitars to the same build quality of the Japanese models.
First batch that came over to the UK did have a Fender noodle logo, but they had changed that to the Squier Stratocaster one on your headstock by the time mine was made. The git who sold me it in 1989 had obviously lifted the Squier decals off and put a Fender one on in its place to pass it off as a US model. I knew nothing of this practice at the time and the internet more or less didn't exist. Paid £250 for it, which I now think is/was money well spent.
Have you customised yours somewhat? I know they didn't come in that colour or with that kind of pickguard.
ketsbaia
In other news, a bit of detective work reveals the Strat I was sold as an early 80s USA by a scheister who took advantage of a naive 20-year-old is, in fact, an early 1983 JV '57 Squier Stratocaster. So I'm going to remove the now-obviously-dodgy headstock decals that pulled the wool over my eyes all those years ago and replace them with the right ones (as in the picture below).
The irony is, it's probably just as good as the ones Fender were putting out from the US at the time if not better. US-made alnico pickups, cloth covered pickup wires, 250k pots, green 0.1uF ceramic capcitor, Gotoh Kluson-style tuners, etc. The more I read about them, the less disappointed I am.