No reason was given, and no further info - date left, date due back, with anyone, etc. - Just mentioned kind of in passing that she was in the Philippines.
I’ve wondered why, and why no mention elsewhere [books, etc.] of such a trip...but... Then all of a sudden just now - Hey, what in sam hill was she doing in the Philippines?
That bit about the wife in the Philippines is from an INS memo from April 1964.
"After alien stated he was married, he said he was separated and that they may get a divorce. The wife in the Philippines from whom he is separated is a USC."
This was during the same period Stanley Ann was divorcing him. The following year she would marry Lolo Soetoro, the Indonesian.
To me, there is no doubt he is talking about Stanley Ann because that is the U.S. citizen wife who was divorcing him during this time period.
That he thinks she is in the Philippines would be par for the course for Obama Sr.
One must remember that Obama Sr. could not have cared less about Stanley Ann or what she was doing.
I think sometime in the spring or summer of 1961 he told her to get lost. The reason to my mind is that he probably found out about her and Frank Marshall Davis and realized that maybe the baby was not his after all. So he told her to go away and had absolutely zero interest in her or her baby after that.
For example, consider the August 1961 communications Obama Sr. had with the INS. He told them Stanley Ann was attending Washington State University that semester.
In fact, that's not where she was attending. She was attending the University of Washington.
So Obama Sr. couldn't even be troubled to remember what college she was going to, this woman who supposedly had just given birth to his baby.
Similarly, I think the explanation for the reference to the Philippines probably arises from Stanley Ann telling him in the run-up to the divorce that she was seeing someone from Indonesia (Lolo Soetoro).
Obama Sr., who could not care less about her doings, probably mis-remembered this as the Philippines when talking to the INS about her and may have been under the impression she and her new man were going off to his home country.