The Pearl Harbor Trip Chronicle

Tuesday's Events	Wednesday's Events	Thursday's Events	Friday's Events	Saturday's Events	Sunday's Events

Now that we're all back home safe and sound (with a Christmas concert to prepare for!), many of you will have an abundance of photos that maybe you'd like to share. While we have nearly 700 photos posted already, I'm sure many out there would like to see more!

If you'd like to share your photos with the rest of the Mustang Band family, here's an easy way to do so. Follow the link below, double-click on the Hawaii folder, then right click inside there to and create your own folder and name it with your name and then copy your photos into that folder. Once you've finished, please drop Mr. Wise an e-mail letting him know you've uploaded photos. Be careful though because once you upload, you can't delete.

Here is that link.

More photos added including an album of Christenbury photos. Click here to see those galleries.

Well, it's almost a wrap! Essentially all that's left is packing up a week's worth of used clothes, purchased souvenirs and a lifetime of memories. Sunday was a heck of a day. Click on the details page above to read more about it and see some pictures.

I've got a few more sets of photos to get uploaded, which I hope to get done before we leave for the airport. Once that's done, it looks like we'll have posted something close to 700 photos encompassing about 1 Gigabyte's worth of space. And I know I've barely scratched the surface of the pictures taken this week. There's also many, many and I mean many more photos that I've not uploaded simply because of overload!

In about 20-30 minutes the band will board buses to travel to Pearl Harbor. The Christenbury's are dressed to the nine's and excited to see the band play! So far the weather is pretty decent, not too hot - let's hope it stays that way.

Saturday was probably the hottest day yet here in Honolulu. The walk up to Waikiki Beach to appear on the webcam was quite warm! But after that, there was a bit of free time before we boarded the buses out to the Polynesian Cultural Center.

The Polynesian Cultural Center proved to be a very educational and fun place with even better food for dinner. The band caught a number of shows including an IMAX film about coral reefs and the closing show of the day for the Cultural Center. The trip back to the hotel was a bit over an hour and really conked most everyone out.

With Sunday being Pearl Harbor day and an early start, I'll hold off on getting more photos posted until we get back from Sunday's activities.

In a few hours we are planning on walking over to Waikiki Beach and stand in front of the webcam. We are preparing to head to breakfast in about 20-30 minutes. We'll take an hour for that and then walk over to the beach, which could take 15-30 minutes to complete. All told that's about 2 hours from now give or take. Or, let's say 2:30p (EST) at the earliest.

Once again, here's the link to the webcam: Waikiki Beach live webcam.

The band finally gets to perform to a truly international audience along the parade route and they did a bang up job! Accolades all around to the band for a wonderful parade.

More updates soon...

More photos added, this time to the Thursday page. Yes, I finally got it written up, sorry for the delay. The photos are courtesy of Ms. Aycock, The Barnes', Candice Boling, Dana & David Martin, Will Freeman, Lisa Martin, Ms. Stokes, Ms. Whisenant, Ms. Huffstetler, Ms. Barker and the Jones'.

Friday was a very quick, fun and busy day. We are currently getting ready to move to warm-ups for the parade! The weather is still very nice and looks to be a wonderful evening for a holiday parade.

Updates to the Wednesday page of photos including pictures from the evening Mixer. I think I'm ready now to get to Thursday's photos plus a big collection of what I'll call miscellaneous photos from various places, so keep tuned for that later this evening!

The big news for today is tonight is the Parade!

We have reschedule the band's webcam appearances on Waikiki Beach from Thursday (tonight) to Saturday. It looks like we'll start showing up on the beach around 9:30-10a Hawaii time - or 2:30-3p EST.

Here is the link to the Waikiki Beach webcam ahead of time - Waikiki Beach live webcam.

3p (EST) more pictures added from Wednesday's excursions.

Thanksgiving Day is by far the best weather we've seen on the trip. It's about 10a local time at this writing and the band is fully involved with enjoying the Hawaiian Waters Adventure Park! There's a balmy breeze and the sunny skies have warmed up to the mid 80's for temperatures - not sure there could be better weather than what we have right now. Truly a day to be thankful to be in Hawaii!

A "traditional" Thanksgiving meal well be served around noon our time and a few hours after that we will head back to the hotel. Programming note: We are trying to work out some times to appear on the Waikiki beach cam that will be before most of our loved ones back home go to bed. As we make plans, we'll try to get ample warning on the main web pages, so keep checking back (we're hearing that many of you are keeping tabs on us, so we'll try our best to get more pictures added!)

Lastly, some words of thanks: The current batch of photos were taken by Ms. Aycock, The Barnes', Candice Boling, Will Freeman, Ms. Huffstetler, Mr. a& Mrs. Martin, Ms. Lisa Martin, Ms. Stokes and Ms. Whisenant.

Wednesday finished off with a nice evening for the band. Check out more about it in the Wednesday update (which now includes some photos from Diamond Head).

To lead off, the first set of photos are posted on the Tuesday page.

Wednesday was a very nice day, we had some rain before breakfast and a quick downpour at Diamond Head (Group 1 got a little soaking, but nothing bad), but then the weather improved greatly for a nice time at Hanauma Bay for snorkeling. We'll have photos and other details from that sometime soon.

As of this writing, the band is on a quick break before heading out to a mixer with many of the other participating bands.

A quick note: we will update the Schedule page with the next day's events with as many details as we can.

The Mustang Band landed safely and excitedly in Honolulu with both Flight Groups landing within minutes of each other. The flights went well as the band shared their flights with other out-of-state bands also traveling to Honolulu - in fact, many of our chaperones received a number of compliments about how well the East Lincoln students behaved and acted!

For more details (but not any pictures....yet) about the band's arrival in Hawaii, click on the link for Tuesday.

For those of you who are early risers, here's an update of the Mustang Band's progress as of 7:15a Tuesday.

The bus trip was uneventful and we got to the Atlanta airport about 4:45a, much sooner than we thought which was great. We were able to get a group check-in and the security process went as smooth as it could possibly go.

And a quick note on that: We are positive that the band in their bright orange Hawaiian shirts greatly helped our check-in and security process! Plus we got a number of supportive comments and well-wishers from other travelers inquiring about this mass of people in Hawaiian shirts.

Mr. Stamey's Flight Group is currently hanging out in Concourse A getting ready to board their plane soon. Mrs. Wise's Flight Group still has 4 hours to kill before boarding their plane to jet non-stop out to Honolulu.

Our next update probably will be this evening, hopefully before 10p (EST) and we'll try to get some photos uploaded too!

The band would like to recognize the following businesses for their part in helping to make the Pearl Harbor trip a reality.

We sincerely appreciate the contributions of each of these wonderful businesses!

Allen Christenbury wasn't even supposed to be at Pearl Harbor that fateful December Sunday in 1941. Because of extreme seasickness, he was set to be discharged before December 1941, but his excellent skills in the metal shop warranted his stay.

Allen met Rebecca a few years earlier at a church gathering in Concord, but after he shipped out to the Navy, they didn't have much contact. Sometime in the summer of 1941, Allen wrote to Rebecca and asked if she would marry him.

Rebecca's mother convinced her to go out to Hawaii and marry him. After a long trip out there, she met up with Allen and they were married on November 15, 1941.

22 days later, the Japanese commenced their bombing raid on Pearl Harbor.

A neighbor woke them that Sunday morning and they could hear the noise associated with the bombing. Allen quickly hurried back to Pearl Harbor. He came under fire before even reaching his ship, the USS Whitney. He saw several fellow servicemen get hit, but was able himself to escape unharmed - almost.

He hit his head on the deck of the USS Whitney and the blow was so jarring that he briefly lost his memory which included forgetting that he was even married.

Two weeks went by before Allen saw Rebecca again, he was working nearly around the clock helping to repair ships. Soon after that, Allen headed out to sea and went more than 23 months without touching land, all the time dealing with his extreme seasickness. He also did not get to see Rebecca during those two years at sea.

Yet, 64 years and a few months later, the Christenburys are living firmly on land here in Charlotte. In the interim, they raised three wonderful children and have seen our country stand as a beacon of freedom for the entire world.

The East Lincoln band is fortunate to have the Christenbury's as our Pearl Harbor survivors and we look forward to hearing many of the exciting, poignant and sometimes even humorous stories of Allen and Rebecca Christenbury!

A photo of Allen and Rebecca in 1941