 Eleanor Nordyke, mother of twins born one day after Barack Obama’s reported birth. |
NEW YORK – Newly unearthed information about Hawaii’s procedure for numbering birth records at the time Barack Obama was born casts further doubt on the authenticity of the short-form and long-form birth certificates published online with the president’s authority.
Details about the registration procedure are significant, because some analysts have wondered how Obama could have been issued a registration number that is higher than the numbers of the published birth certificates of Susan and Gretchen Nordyke, which were registered three days later than the president’s.
Some have speculated that even though Obama’s birth certificate was received by the registrar Aug. 8, 1961, the registration number could have been assigned a few days later by a clerk processing a batch that included the Nordyke twins’ birth records.
But a 1955 article by Charles Bennett, Hawaii’s registrar general in 1961, and George Tokuyama, chief of the registration and records section for the state’s Department of Health, stated birth certificates were numbered immediately upon acceptance by the registrar-general.
The article published in the November-December 1955 issue of the Hawaii Medical Journal, titled “Vital Records in Hawaii,” makes clear that the territory was streamlining and structuring an undisciplined vital records system to comply with U.S. Bureau of Census practices in preparation for statehood in 1959.
As WND reported, the numbers on the long-form birth certificates issued by Kapi’olani hospital to the Nordyke twins are lower than the number assigned to Obama’s published birth certificates, even though the president’s birth record indicates it was accepted by the registrar-general three days earlier.
- Susan Nordyke, the first twin, was born at 2:12 p.m. Hawaii time on Aug. 5, 1961, and was given Certificate No. 151 – 61 – 10637, which was filed with the Hawaii registrar Aug. 11, 1961.
- Gretchen Nordyke, the second twin, was born at 2:17 p.m. Aug. 5, 1961, and was given Certificate No. 151 – 61 – 10638, which was also filed with the Hawaii registrar Aug. 11, 1961.
- Yet, according to the Certification of Live Birth released by FactCheck.org during the 2008 presidential campaign – and now according to the long-form, hospital-generated birth certificate the White House released last month – Obama was given a higher certificate number than the Nordyke twins.
- Obama was given Certificate No. 151 – 61 – 10641, even though he was born Aug. 4, 1961, the day before the Nordyke twins, and his birth was registered with the Hawaii Department of Health registrar three days earlier, on Aug. 8, 1961.
These facts suggest that if the two Obama documents are forgeries, the forger was unaware of the Nordyke twins’ birth certificates, which were first published July 28, 2009, in an article in the Honolulu Advertiser, more than one year after Obama’s short-form Certification of Live Birth was posted by the Daily Kos.
 Birth certificate of Gretchen Nordyke, one of two twin sisters born at what was known in 1961 as the Kapiolani Maternity & Gynecological Hospital in Honolulu, Hawaii. |
A search of Hawaii newspapers indicates 13 babies were born in Hawaii on Aug. 4, 1961, and 22 on Aug. 5, 1961, suggesting Obama’s birth certificate number should be about 30 to 50 digits lower that the Nordyke twins’ numbers.
Since the Hawaii DOH will not allow an open inspection of the August 1961 birth records, it is impossible to know how many birth certificates the registrar general filed and numbered between Aug. 8 and Aug. 11, 1961.
Birth certificate procedures revised in 1955
In his 1955 article, Bennett and Tokuyama noted that by 1950, Hawaii had reduced the total number of local registrars from 35 to four.
“Since the central office (in Honolulu) can deal more easily with four officials than a larger number, this reduction greatly simplified administration of the system,” they wrote. “With present-day communication facilities, the reduction in number of registrars does not inconvenience the public.”
The authors made it clear that even with his revisions, family members could report a birth to the Hawaii Department of Health, a practice that WND has shown would have allowed Obama’s grandparents to report the birth, even if Obama were not born in Hawaii.
“The attending physician or midwife must report births to the local registrar within seven days after they occur,” they wrote. “If neither was in attendance, a parent or other person must report.”
As WND reported, the address in the newspaper announcement of Obama’s birth was 6085 Kalanianaole Highway, which is where the grandparents lived. There is no indication that Barack Obama Sr. and Ann Dunham ever lived together as husband and wife.
Hospitals prepare birth certificates
Bennett’s and Tokuyama’s article is also rich in details regarding how the original birth certificates were produced in Hawaii in the era in which Obama was born.
“In practice, a hospital where a birth occurs assumes the responsibility for reporting it,” they noted. “Since more than 95% of all birth occur in hospitals, this is the usual procedure.”
Here is the critical paragraph:
A nurse or clerk in the hospital fills in the certificate form and gets the mother to sign it. Then the attending physician enters certain medical data and affixes his signature. Finally the hospital sends the completed certificate to the local registrar.
Then, if any question arose, the registrar asked the hospital about it, rather than contacting the doctor directly, even though the legal responsibility for reporting remained with the physician.
When the local registrar was satisfied the birth certificate was complete, the registrar-general filed it by placing the filing date on the birth certificate and assigning it a number.
The date was recorded by an ink stamp that manually adjusted the date in the format month-day-year.
The certificate number appears to be applied with a Bates numbering stamp that advanced automatically by one number each time the stamp was used.
Bennett’s and Tokuyama’s description of this procedure shows that birth certificates were numbered upon acceptance by the registrar-general, and there was no provision that would allow an accepted birth certificate to be put in a pile for three days before a number was stamped on it.
