By Chisa Fujioka
HIGASHIMATSUSHIMA, Japan, March 25 (Reuters) - Families in a tsunami-stricken town in northeast Japan said farewell to their loved ones in a solemn burial on Friday, sobbing as they laid chrysanthemums and incense next to a mass grave lined with coffins.
The burial for the 42 victims was especially painful for the families because deep graves have been unthinkable in a country where the dead are usually cremated and their ashes placed in stone family tombs near Buddhist temples. Local regulations often prohibit burial of bodies.
Crematoriums in the town of Higashimatsushima on the Pacific coast have been overwhelmed by the number of bodies and their incinerators cannot keep up, forcing families to resort to the burial of bodies. Local reports say 650 people in the town lost their lives and 430 more are still missing.
"Of course, a cremation would have been better," said Fumiko Akabane, 52, who was at the site to bury her nephew, Tomohide, in the chilly wind.
"We looked all around for crematoriums thinking we should try to find one even if we had to go far. But we were told that we would have to take the body in our own car and the body would be damaged if we took too much time."
She said the family was also unable to go far because of a fuel shortage in the area after the tsunami, which killed over 10,000 people and left 17,500 missing.
"I have no children so I loved him like my own son."
Other towns obliterated by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami are also digging mass graves, although a burial for 150 unidentified people planned for Friday in Kamaishi, north of Higashimatsushima, was postponed.
Akabane's eyes welled up as military trucks rolled into the burial site, once a recycling yard. Military officers wearing white gloves slowly carried the wooden coffins out of the truck and into the graves, saluting after lowering each one.
Families then walked in an orderly line and helped each other down into the waist-high pit, crying as they placed flowers, money and mementos into the coffins. One wrapped a body in a thick blanket.
They brushed off any dirt on the coffins before climbing up to the ground again and pressed their palms together in prayer. Some then shovelled small piles of dirt over the top.
Akabane said the family had not yet held a funeral for Tomohide, 27, who had tried to escape the tidal wave in a car with his mother and grandmother.
He got out of the car to call the hospital where he worked as an administrative staff but was soon swept away by the tsunami, while his mother and grandmother survived.
The graves, identified with thin wood with names hand-written in black, are temporary and those buried will be exhumed later and cremated with a proper funeral.
"Everyone in the town who survived is thinking, it could have been me," said Akabane. "Perhaps the funeral will be joint funeral with everyone here." (Reporting by Chisa Fujioka; Editing by Sugita Katyal)