On Sunday, the Northern State University Marching Wolves and a special guest will embark on the trip of a lifetime -- to Hawaii for the Waikiki Holiday Parade, commemorating the 65th anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the island of Oahu.

The band's special guest is 85-year-old Floyd Meek, a World War II veteran from Holabird, who was stationed at Pearl Harbor during the bombing.

The bombing of Pearl Harbor marked the United States' entrance into World War II. A total of 2,390 members of the military forces died as a result of the attack.

Last year, Marching Wolves director Boyd Perkins sent letters to the 15 surviving South Dakota World War II veterans, inviting them to travel with the band to Hawaii.

"There were some that wanted to come, but couldn't for health reasons," he said.

Meek and his son, Delmas, were the only ones who could make the trip.

On Dec. 7, 1941, Meek was 20 years old and serving in the U.S. Navy on the USS Honolulu. At 10 a.m. that day, a bomb hit the dock beside the USS Honolulu. The bomb exploded underwater and damaged the ship near the magazine, but no fire or other explosions resulted.

"We were fortunate that nobody got hurt," Meek said.

Meek served on the USS Honolulu from Dec. 9, 1939, to Sept. 20, 1944.

Meek and the Marching Wolves will arrive in Honolulu, Hawaii, on Monday afternoon.

On Wednesday, the band will perform at the USS Missouri Battleship, where Japan formally surrendered, marking the end of World War II.

The band will also visit the USS Arizona Memorial, the final resting place of many of the ship's crewmen. The USS Arizona was hit by a bomb 15 minutes into the attack on Pearl Harbor. Of a crew of 1,511, only 334 survived.

"We get to lay a wreath at the Arizona Memorial," Perkins said.

The band will have other opportunities to sightsee during its free time. It will return to Aberdeen on Nov. 27.

NSU is the only college band in the Waikiki Holiday Parade on Friday evening; there are 24 bands total, Perkins said. He said parade organizers invited every band that performed in the Presidential Inauguration Parade in 2005, but many bands couldn't make it because of the cost.

To raise money for the trip, the NSU Marching Wolves sold tickets to its indoor marching concert last November and raffled off tickets for a chance to travel to Hawaii with the band. Mark and Mary Gjernes of Aberdeen won the raffle.

Perkins said the band raised about 18 percent of the total cost of the trip; students had to come up with the rest of the money themselves. Of the 124 Marching Wolves, 62 are making the trip. The total cost is about $130,000.

"I'd love to have the whole group there, but it's just too much money," Perkins said.

Perkins, four other faculty members and eight members of the NSU Dance Team are also traveling with the band. The Dance Team will perform in the parade with the band.

Performing in the parade will be an invaluable experience for the band, Perkins said, because it will help attract members to the band and build its resume for other big parades.

"Our goal is a Rose Parade or a Macy's (Thanksgiving Day) Parade," he said.

But the biggest experience students will take with them, he said, is actually being in the place where the events of "a day which will live in infamy" took place.

"It really strikes home what happened," Perkins said. "Unless you're there, you can't grasp it."

He thinks having Meek on the trip will give students a more personal connection to those events.

"I'm looking forward to having him along and sharing those experiences with him," Perkins said.

Meek has been back to Hawaii for the 30th, 40th and 50th anniversaries of the Pearl Harbor bombing. Those trips brought back a lot of sad memories for him, "especially those people that are buried in the ship, the Arizona," he said.

Sophomore Kevin Nelson, a tenor saxophone player, and senior Amanda Stulken, an alto saxophone player, think the trip to Pearl Harbor will be emotional for everyone.

"It will actually make everything real, like this actually happened," Stulken said.

Nelson thinks seeing the sights and talking to Meek will be a good education as well.

"You can go to school and go to history class and learn about (Pearl Harbor), but to actually learn from somebody that went through it. ... You'll learn more about it than you would from a book," he said.