Okubo and Lee can’t both be right. The only way to know which is right is by looking at the microfilms from multiple randomly-chosen months in different years.
According to Mike Zullo, Verna Lee said the BC’s were sorted within the geographic unit by order of birth. If anything was alphabetized then she lied in her statements to Corsi, and that would also raise questions of why.
No matter how you slice it, the discrepancies demand answers, and those answers will only be known when the above microfilms are examined - and when the records of these anomalous BC’s are fully audited.
“If anything was alphabetized then she lied in her statements to Corsi, and that would also raise questions of why.”
That’s pretty harsh - considering she is 95 years old and this was 40 or 50 years ago. It is possible that the methodology for numbering the BCs changed overtime. Maybe in the early 60s they were alphabetized and later they were not. Who knows what she is remembering.
But if they were separated geographically, it makes sense that Virgina Sunahara’s number would not be in the same position numerically as kids born at Kapiolani. In 1961 the county of Honolulu was divided into two vital statistics geographic regions (Honolulu City and the rest of the county). Virginia was not born within the Honolulu city limits so her BC would not be included with the kids born at Kapiolani.