Shinano River incident
[1] Their strategy was to employ a large number of labourers at low wages who were detained in cramped, low-grade dormitories referred to as tako-beya, or "octopus rooms".Furthermore, the Okura group’s management believed that the labourers had a lazy work ethic and treated them violently.[citation needed] In July 1922, dozens of Koreans who tried to escape the construction site were gunned down or otherwise killed by the plant foremen.[citation needed] The massacre was exposed when the corpses of the Koreans gradually drifted from the upper course of the river over several days after the start of the construction.[1][3] The public uproar which this incident created was partially responsible for the development of trade unions for Korean workers in Japan.