You could call it Thanksgiving if you wanted to, but a Thursday is still a Thursday to some, and Thomas Kuehe could easily have spent his alone in his Waipahu home as usual.

Instead, as he does every fourth Thursday of November, Kuehe, 45, set out on the No. 40 bus, town-bound, to join an estimated 2,000 people at the Neal Blaisdell Exhibition Hall for a free Thanksgiving meal, a bit of entertainment and as much warmth and camaraderie as he could absorb.

Since 1971 the annual Salvation Army Thanksgiving Dinner has brought together civic-minded individuals from community organizations, schools, businesses and the military — about 1,000 volunteers each year — to provide hot meals to seniors and people who are homeless, disabled or otherwise in need.

“It’s a day when the community comes together to serve those in need,” said Salvation Army Maj. John Chamness, who has presided over the annual event since 1989. “When people come here, they’re treated with love and respect. You can get a meal any day, but you can’t get this kind of fellowship.”

Food, supplies and decorations come almost entirely from donations. This year Buy-a-Pie programs at Anna Miller’s and Zippy’s restaurants resulted in some 250 donated pies to complement a meal of turkey, stuffing, gravy, rice, pineapple, dinner rolls and hot and cold beverages.

Planning for the event starts in early summer. This year David Lucus, food service and reservations director for the Salvation Army’s Camp Homelani, assumed control of kitchen operations, leading a massive, expertly staged effort involving more than 200 volunteers.

Local hotels help to cook the roughly 100 20-pound turkeys needed for the feast. The birds are delivered a day prior and reheated on-site the morning of the event.

Lucus and his volunteers start their work at sunrise, slicing the turkey, fluffing the stuffing, making gravy and cutting pies at a pace that would make Santa’s workshop look like the late shift at the BlackBerry factory.

“The battle is to get everybody going,” said Lucus, 52. “Then when things get moving, it’s organized chaos.”

“It’s a cool thing to do,” he says. “I love walking around afterward and seeing all the smiling faces.”

Jan Angeles, 41, a hairdresser from Mililani, has been volunteering at the event since she was 16.

On Thursday she served as a volunteer leader, directing servers to hundreds of guests seated along row after row of tables, a job that requires the skills of an air traffic controller and the reflexes of a Whack-a-Mole champ.

The mother of 7-year-old twins, Angeles said she finds it particularly gratifying to help provide meals to families in need.

“It breaks my heart to see hungry families, especially families with young kids,” she said.

Roy Okumura, wife Minda and their daughter Nancy attended the dinner for the first time Thursday.

Okumura, 70, said the occasion made him especially mindful of the gratitude he feels for his family’s good health and the 36 years that he and his wife have been together.

The event was a rare opportunity for the Okumuras, who volunteer with the Salvation Army and donate to various disaster relief efforts, to sit back and enjoy some of the aloha they’re so used to giving.

The meal also meant that they wouldn’t have to scrape up something at home and that Minda, 61, would have something substantial in her stomach before she headed off to her job at the Wahiawa 7-Eleven later in the day.

This year’s event included a Family Closet, sponsored by Echelon Hawaii, which provided lightly used clothing to those in need.

Kuehe stopped by the booth, scoring a couple of nice T-shirts and some pants before heading back to the bus stop.

“It was really good this year,” he said, beaming. “I’m going to come back next year.”