"For many of us he was the most important teacher we had," she said. "Every day after school there was always a line of students outside his door to see him, just to talk to him for a few minutes. He always gave you 100 percent of his attention."

Some of Watanabe's students from his tenure at Baldwin from 1942 to 1967 will be honoring him with a dinner next month.

Watanabe, 84, was in the band at Washington Intermediate and McKinley High School, graduating in 1937. After a year at the University of Hawai'i, he enrolled in the Lawrence University Conservatory of Music in Wisconsin.

After graduating in 1941, he took a job as a regular teacher at 'Ola'a Elementary near Hilo. Then came Pearl Harbor.

A large number of band teachers in Hawai'i at the time were mainlanders, he said, and many decided to pack it up after the war broke out. That left vacancies for Watanabe and others. In 1942, he took a position at Baldwin, which had opened two years earlier with one of the finest auditoriums in the territory.

But he interrupted his teaching career in 1943 to volunteer for the 442nd Regimental Combat Team. Eventually he was assigned as a language specialist with the Military Intelligence Service, serving with the British in India and Burma.

Saburo Watanabe conducted at a band rehearsal in 1963 at Baldwin High School. Watanabe taught at Baldwin from 1942 to 1967. Baldwin High School

"Most of the kids were from plantation homes and there was no money for instruments. Hardly anyone owned their own instrument. It was a bleak situation," he said.

A fellow teacher told Watanabe about a heap of discarded musical instruments he had found at the military dump. Most were pretty banged up, but Watanabe thought they could be salvaged.

"We got quite a lot of instruments from that dump. I spent weekends and evenings repairing instruments for the students," Watanabe said.

By 1947, the Baldwin High School band program was ready to hold its first spring concert, a tradition that has continued through the years. By 1948, the band had three separate units totalling 107 members, plus two beginning classes.

Watanabe said Baldwin has the state's longest-running string of spring concerts, and also was the first Hawai'i high school to perform a full-fledged halftime show at football games. That's one tradition that didn't last, though. "It was killing me," said Watanabe.

With no intermediate school band program on Maui during those years, students entering ninth grade at Baldwin had no prior musical training. Watanabe said his goal was to turn them into "respectable musicians" by the end of four years.

But he also felt a duty as a mentor, especially for students from disadvantaged homes. "I wanted my students to turn out to be responsible citizens and contributing members of society. That should be the goal of all of us who get into the teaching game," he said.

Alva Nakamura, 62, who graduated in 1960, said Watanabe's lectures would sometimes frustrate students who just wanted to play music. Many years later, he realized his teacher's advice had helped him make important decisions in his life.

Nakamura, engineering division chief with the Maui Department of Water Supply, said he was most impressed with Watanabe's dedication. "I would see him after school, fixing instruments in the bandroom so that students would be able to play them. He would march along with us in parades and at every football game he was out there and not getting paid for any of this stuff," he said.

At least a dozen of Watanabe's students have gone on to become band teachers or music educators, including Lance Jo, who took over from Watanabe in 1967 as the Baldwin band teacher and retired in 2003, and Amy Mitsuda, music department director at Punahou School.

Watanabe left Baldwin to become Maui District curriculum specialist in music education, retiring in 1978. He said he was happy to hear that the Board of Education recently approved new fine arts requirements for high school, and hopes it will draw more students into band.

"It's one of the few programs in school where students can learn to interact and work together," he said.

Watanabe also believes that music makes students "sensitive to the finer things in life."

The recognition dinner for Watanabe will be at 6 p.m. Aug. 15 at Cary & Eddie's Hideaway in Kahului. For reservations, e-mail Mike Matsumoto at matsumotm017@hawaii.rr.com or write to him at 72 Ili Kupono St., Wailuku 96793. The cost of the dinner is $30. Checks may be sent to Marlene Kushi at 2290 W. Main Street, Wailuku 96793.