Tanaka Memorial

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"Tanaka Memorial", New York, Chinese Student Patriotic Association of America, probably published between 1938–41.

The Tanaka Memorial (田中上奏文 Tanaka Josobun?) is an alleged Japanese strategic planning document from 1927, in which Prime Minister Baron Tanaka Giichi laid out for the Emperor Hirohito a strategy to take over the world. It is believed by most historians to be a forgery [1] which was used to justify a long-term war against Japan, and by others to be genuine and an accurate prediction of Japanese action in the region.

Contents

[edit] Background

The Tanaka Memorial gained its first publicity when it was published in the 1929, December edition of China Critic (Current Affair Monthly, 時事月報) in Nanking, a Nationalist Chinese publication.[2]

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.
If we succeed in conquering China, the rest of the Asiatic countries and the South Sea countries will fear us and surrender to us.
Then the world will realize that Eastern Asia is ours.

The English translation of this document was in circulation before February 1934, and formed the foundation of the lead article on the front page of the first edition of The Plain Truth magazine published by Herbert W. Armstrong in February of that year,[3] although it had first appeared in the less widely circulated Communist International magazine in 1931.

The Tanaka Memorial was depicted extensively by United States wartime propaganda as a sort of Japanese answer to Mein Kampf. Frank Capra's Academy Award-winning movie series Why We Fight, the installments The Battle of China and Prelude to War describe the Tanaka Memorial as the document that was the Japanese plan for war with the United States [4]. As presented in Battle of China, the four sequential steps to achieve Japan's goal of conquests are

  1. Conquest of Manchuria
  2. Conquest of China
  3. Establishment of bases in the Pacific
  4. Conquest of the United States

Even though its authenticity has been called into question by some today, the Tanaka Memorial was widely accepted as authentic in the 1930s and 40s because Japan's actions corresponded so closely to these plans. The 1931 Mukden Incident, 1937 Second Sino-Japanese War, and the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor and the subsequent Pacific War seemed to confirm this suspicion.[5] Some historical experts such as Edwin P. Hoyt, state unequivocally that "... the Tanaka Memorial was real. It was just too good a copy of what Prime Minister Tanaka had said and what the supernationalists had been saying for months to be otherwise."[6] Others, such as Meirion Harries, state just as unequivocally that the Tanaka Memorial "...was one of the most successful “dirty tricks” of the twentieth century – a bogus document so brilliantly conceived that thirty years later Westerns were still being taken in by it".[7] Likewise, famed historian W G Beasley, states "…the nature of this document, as published variously in English and Chinese, does not carry conviction as to its authenticity".[8]

[edit] Speculation of forgery

In the summer of 1927, Tanaka convened a ‘Far East Conference’ with members of the Japanese Foreign Ministry, Army Ministry, Navy Ministry, and Finance Ministry. However, instead of producing a master plan for world domination, the result of the Conference was a rough consensus that Japan should support the Kuomintang government of China against the Chinese communists, as long as the Japanese could convince General Chang Tso-lin to consolidate his base in a virtually autonomous Manchuria, which would serve as a buffer state, and would fall eventually within Japanese domination.[9] It is alleged that the Tanaka Memorial is a secret report of this Conference.

When the Allies searched for incriminating documents to support war crime charges following the surrender of Japan, no drafts or copies of anything corresponding to the Tanaka Memorial appeared among them. Almost all academic historians now regard the Memorial as a forgery [10] and consider it in the same category as the Zinoviev letter and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.[11]

The origin of the Memorial is still in question. Because the initial edition of the Memorial was in Chinese, many historians have attributed it to Chinese, most probably Chinese communist sources.[12]

There have been claims of forgery by the Soviet Union to encourage war between China and Japan, and so to advance Soviet interests. [13] The two theories are not mutually exclusive, as the Chinese Communist Party was a branch of Comintern under control of the Soviet Union, and Soviet policy from the 1930s was to wage a propaganda war against Japanese expansionism. Also, the first translation of the Memorial into English was done by the Communist Party of America and published in the December 1931 issue of Communist International magazine. It was later re-printed in book format.[14]

In 1939, Peter Fleming claimed to have produced an ‘update’ to the Tanaka Memorial, by writing an imaginary report on a secret Allied strategy conference attended by Kuomintang leader Chiang Kai-Shek, and having it leaked to the Japanese. This indicates that the Tanaka Memorial was known to be a forgery by the British prior to World War II. [15]

Newspapers and school textbooks in the People's Republic of China still mention the Tanaka Memorial as fact without stating that not only the the Japanese, but also most western historians, contend that the document is a forgery. [16]

[edit] See also

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Chang, the Rape of Nanking, pp.178
  2. ^ Harries, Soldiers of the Rising Sun pp.162
  3. ^ Cog
  4. ^ Dower, War Without Mercy, pp. 22
  5. ^ Coble, Parks M. Facing Japan: Chinese politics and Japanese imperialism, 1931–1937 p. 36. Harvard University Press, 1991. ISBN 0674775309
  6. ^ Hoyt, Edwin P. (2001). Japan's War The Great Pacific Conflict. Cooper Square Press, 62. ISBN 0-8154-1118-9
  7. ^ Harries, Soldiers of the Rising Sun, pp. 162
  8. ^ Beasley, Japanese Imperialism 1894-1945. pp. 185
  9. ^ Jansen, The Making of Modern Japan, pp.525
  10. ^ Chang, the Rape of Nanking, pp.178
  11. ^ Dower, War Without Mercy, pp. 22 and 320
  12. ^ Jansen, The Making of Modern Japan, pp.525
  13. ^ Rommerstein, The Venoma Secrets, pp. 520
  14. ^ Schecter, Shared Secrets. pp.8
  15. ^ Holt, The Deceivers, pp.298
  16. ^ Chang, the Rape of Nanking, pp.178

Rommerstein, The Venona Secrets, pp. 520

[edit] References

  • Beasley, W.G. (1991). Japanese Imperialism 1894-1945. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0198221681. 
  • Chang, Iris (1998). The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II. Penguin. ISBN 0-14-027744-7. 
  • Dower, John W (1987). War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific WarWar Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War. Pantheon. 0394751728. 
  • Gordon, Andrew (2003). A Modern History of Japan: From Tokugawa Times to the Present. Oxford University Press. 0195110617. 
  • Harries, Meirion (1994). Soldiers of the Sun: The Rise and Fall of the Imperial Japanese Army. Random House; Reprint edition. 0-679-75303-6. 
  • Holt, Thaddeus (2007). The Deceivers: Allied Military Deception in the Second World War. Skyhorse Publishing. 1602391424. 
  • Jansen, Marius B. (2000). The Making of Modern Japan. Belknap Press. ISBN 0674009916. 
  • Rommerstein, Herbert (2001). The Venona Secrets, Exposing Soviet Espionage and America's Traitors. Regniery Publishing. ISBN 0895262258. 
  • Schecter, Leona (2003). Sacred Secrets: How Soviet Intelligence Operations Changed American History. Potomac Books. ISBN 1574885227. 
  • Stein, Gordon Encyclopedia of Hoaxes, Gale Group, 1993. (On itself) ISBN 0-8103-8414-0
  • Allen S. Whiting, China Eyes Japan, University of California Press, 1989. ISBN 0-520-06511-5

[edit] External links

These sources contest the authenticity of the Memorial:

These sources advocate the authenticity of the Memorial:

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