Kamaishi , Japan ( CNN ) -- Ikuo Fujiwara stops in front of the wreckage of the Buddhist temple , brings his hands together and prays . The monk bursts into tears , an involuntary act , as he asks heaven what he can do to comfort his destroyed hometown and begin to rebuild his house of worship . Fujiwara needs heaven to speak to him , for he must preside over Kamaishi 's first mass burials in memory . Behind his temple , the sound of heavy machinery digging giant ditches for unmarked coffins echoes through the shattered remains of the 300-year-old building . `` We do n't have enough places to cremate the bodies , '' says Fujiwara . `` So temporarily , we 're burying the bodies here . '' The ditches sit within 50 meters of the Buddhist burial plots , where cremated remains lie underneath grey headstones . This is a sacred practice that every Japanese person expects at death , explains Fujiwara . A Japanese funeral is elaborate , formal , and ritualized in the Buddhist faith . So the wide ditches and the coffins , which will eventually lie in them side by side , are an unbearable insult in the minds of ordinary Japanese citizens . But ordinary expectations have been abandoned in Japan 's tsunami zone , where entire towns were decimated by a wall of water that struck in the wake of a magnitude-9.0 earthquake March 11 . `` I feel very sad about this , '' says Fujiwara , adding that the mass graves are only one component of the overwhelming pain felt throughout Kamaishi . `` My friends and my temple members , I do n't know yet how many of them I lost . And the town is destroyed . I 'm concerned if we can rebuild . '' Fujiwara does n't look like the monk of this temple , wearing a fisherman 's boots and winter coat . The tsunami destroyed all of his robes . Like many of the tsunami victims mourning the dead , he ca n't dress in proper funeral attire . Fujiwara says he will still try to administer the most respectful service he can offer to the survivors who will line the ditches . But he knows in the minds of many of those families , it will never replace a proper Japanese Buddhist ceremony . However , city health leaders say they have no choice but to bury the dead in mass graves . Thousands of bodies pulled from the rubble have been stored in school gymnasiums-turned-morgues . About 17,000 people remain missing , so officials believe more bodies will be recovered . Even if they can be identified , the crematoriums on Japan 's northern coastline are either damaged from the tsunami or already full . A shortage of gas has meant bodies ca n't be taken to other parts of the country for cremation . Stressing the burials will be temporary , cities have begun the process of placing bodies in mass graves to prevent disease outbreak . Tadaharu Kinoshita , searching through Kamaishi 's morgues for his brother , says it hurts his heart to think of his kin lying in a mass grave . But there is a greater indignity , he says . `` My one hope is to find his body , '' says Kinoshita . `` If he remains missing , we 'll never really know . Even if he 's in a mass grave , at least then , we 'll know . ''
Buddhist burials typically are highly ritualized . The city of Kyoto lacks the facilities to cremate the dead . The bodies must be buried in mass graves to prevent a disease outbreak . Some say the mass graves are temporary .