Tanaka Memorial The is an alleged Japan ese 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 . Today it is generally considered by scholars to be a forgery . Background . The " Tanaka Memorial " was first published in the December 1929 edition of the Chinese publication " 時事月報 " ( Current Affair Monthly ) in Nanking , a Nationalist Chinese publication . It was later reproduced in 24 September 1931 , pp . 923 – 34 of " China Critic " , an English publication in Shanghai . The memorial contains the assertions : 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 , 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 counterpart of " 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 . As presented in these movie series , the five sequential steps to achieve Japan ' s goal of conquests are Even though its authenticity is not accepted by scholars 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 , 1939 Battles of Khalkhin Gol , 1940 Japanese invasion of French Indochina , and the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor and the subsequent Pacific War seemed to confirm this suspicion . In 1940 Leon Trotsky published an account of how the document allegedly came to light . Soviet intelligence had obtained the document from a high - placed mole in Tokyo , but did not want to compromise their own security by publishing it openly , so had leaked it through contacts they had in the USA . Some historical experts such as Edwin P . Hoyt , have stated 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 . " 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 " . Likewise , historian WG Beasley states that " . . . the nature of this document , as published variously in English and Chinese , does not carry conviction as to its authenticity " . Dr . Haruo Tohmatsu , Professor of Diplomacy and War History of International Relations at the National Defense Academy of Japan , states that " The ' Tanaka Memorial ' never existed , but the Darien conference of that year adopted resolutions that reflected these ideas . " Speculation of forgery . In the summer of 1927 ( June 27 – July 7 ) , 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 Zhang Zuolin to consolidate his base in a virtually autonomous Manchuria , which would serve as a buffer state , and would fall eventually within Japanese domination . 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 ; a Japanese language " original " has never been produced despite extensive research efforts . The origin of the Memorial is still in question . Because the initial edition of the Memorial was in Chinese , some Japanese historians have attributed it to Chinese sources , probably either Chinese Nationalists or Chinese Communists . There have been claims of forgery by the Soviet Union to encourage war between China and Japan , and so to advance Soviet interests . 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 . 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 . While the " Tanaka Memorial " has been mentioned in newspapers and school textbooks in China , most Japanese historians contend that the document is a forgery . In 1995 , Vitaliy Pavlov , a retired high - ranking NKVD officer , wrote about the Tanaka Memorial in the Moscow journal " Novosti Razvedki I Kontrrazvedki " ( News of Intelligence and Counterintelligence ) . Pavlov said the work was a forgery prepared by the Soviet Union in 1931 to sow anti - Japanese feelings in the U . S . and in Europe . On January 1 , 2008 , a Japanese newspaper Tokyo Shimbun reported that a Chinese historian group considered the " Tanaka Memorial " to be of dubious authenticity and suggested that the majority of Chinese historians regard the document as a forgery , in a collaborative research meeting held in September 2007 . These sources contest the authenticity of the Memorial : External links . These sources advocate the authenticity of the Memorial :