Tanaka Memorial
The Tanaka Memorial is an alleged Japanese war planning document from 1927, now generally regarded as a forgery, in which Prime Minister Tanaka laid out for the Japanese Emperor the strategy to take over the world. Among important political forgeries it may be ranked somewhere between the Zinoviev letter and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Its strategy may be summarized by the lines (which do not appear literally in the document):
In order to take over the world, you need to take over China;
In order to take over China, you need to take over Manchuria and Mongolia.
It was used by United States wartime propaganda as "Japan's Mein Kampf." The Battle of China, one of Frank Capra's movie series Why We Fight (given the Academy Award as a documentary), uses the Tanaka Memorial as justification for war between the United States and Japan.
As presented in Battle of China, the four sequential steps to achieve Japan's goal of conquests are
- Conquest of Manchuria
- Conquest of China
- Attack on Indochina
- Attack on the United States of America
Interestingly enough, although the reality of the Tanaka Memorial is questionable, its goals were clearly carried out by the Japanese forces during the war one by one. Some scholars have said that the Tanaka Memorial didn't have to exist for its stated policies to have been carried out.
Further reading
External Links
These sites deny the authenticity of the documents.
These sites accept the authenticity of the documents.