"Barack Obama Sr. poses with his son in the Honolulu airport during Obama Sr.’s only visit to see his son while he was growing up in Hawaii. Young Barack was in the 5th grade when the photo was taken. (Photo courtesy of Barack Obama / March 23, 2007)"
Something very strange is going on here. The San Francisco sign is so easy to see in that picture of him with his father. The one with Barack Sr. and Ann the wording above is very hard to read. I guess since the angle is slightly different could make it harder to read. But could it say "Philippines" like you thought it said in the one picture and also "San Francisco"? I am not familiar with airports.
The sign says “Philippine Airlines”...probably already pointed out, but nevertheless.
One of the labels needs to be incorrect--because both pictures were taken at the same time; the background photos down to the man in the background and his dress all line up.
The flip from Philippines to San Francisco may be an early destination sign changing. Honolulu is one airport in which I have not spent any material time.
As someone else suggests earlier, it should be considered that the boy is not Barack but his half brother. The cheek bones on the boy appear too low for Barack. Although the boy in the picture looks much like Barack in the family picture on the couch posted later.
Another research task that should be considered by someone with the expertise to undertake it is to learn the available airline routing between Honolulu and Kenya in the early 1960's. It is possible that the only or most available routing is traveling East, not West. All connections through San Francisco and the East Coast.
The incorrect references in the news media look on reflection like an effort to manufacture a time line for these events. If she is really standing in the departure lobby of the Honolulu airport, three months pregnant in her wedding dress, it looks like she is going somewhere.
Her family is in Honolulu. Where is she going? There is certainly an obvious inference.
This fits with another new fact. In the Chicago Tribune article (or Time or both), they quote (self-serving testimony by) Barack that when mother applied for a passport to Indonesia, it was her first passport and first trip out of the country. So she never saw her inlaws in Kenya? Really? Certainly, she was never there when he was born?
The first passport story might well fit the facts. I believe although have not confirmed, that as late as the early sixties, not only could the child travel on the mother or father's passport; so could the wife travel on the husband's passport. So there may in fact be some kind of wedding confirmation in Hawaii around the end of the year in 1961, then used by the father as a basis to travel the wife.
They were going to Kenya where he had influence and may not have needed to be concerned about entry documents and visas. On the return, even if he was not with them, under then applicable law, she got back into the country with her Driver's License--probably with a Kenya birth certificate for her kid, he got in also.