I have always believed that some form of filing was made on August 8, 1961. And given the effort they engaged in to get her back from Africa, I assume she made it. But it is difficult to see why, if they made it, they would then have made a filing showing that he was born in Africa; which I believe they did. That's why they can't let you see the vault copy.
Where did we get the microfiche? I don't think we got them from an official source--I think someone claimed to have found one in an obscure Library collection; later a second one the same way. Exactly what you would do if you had faked the first one, found it; and then thought you needed to find a second one to authenticate the first.
I did think the papers had a reasonable story about why they couldn't come up with the hard copy. I was a little surprised that the Seattle Public Library didn't have either hard copy or microfiche for the period.
But on reflection, you might expect the Records section to show the hospital and doctor; because those are the people who initiate the filings. Further, grandmother was an influential person in Honolulu--didn't make any difference what color the kid was or what his parentage was, if they had been going to drop him in Hawaii, he would have had gold plated hospital and doctor care.
That's really one of the best arguments--if the announcements were genuine, you would have found a doctor and hospital because the family was an established Hawaii family and their names would also have been on the announcement. No doctor, hospital, nurse, attending person, no single person who has any first hand knowledge has appeared.
The Hawaii DOH (cross-checked by the OIP)has confirmed that there are supplementary documents to support the claims on Obama’s original or amended birth certificate.
If the supplementary documents are for the original claims, then Obama was not born in a hospital in Hawaii. If the supplementary documents are for the amended claim, then either the birth wasn’t attended by a doctor and more information had to be added, or Obama 40+ years after the birth contradicted the doctor’s eyewitness testimony.
Either way it results in a birth certificate that doesn’t count as prima facie evidence of anything.
My gut belief is that Madelyn did register Obama’s birth shortly after he was born so the origination date for his records is Aug 8, 1961. But I don’t believe that the birth announcements came from the state registrar. If Obama’s birth announcement was in the original paper (and that I don’t know yet) it was most certainly put there by Madelyn Dunham, or perhaps a local registrar. But probably Madelyn.
I have serious questions about whether they were originally there though. We’ll see where the data takes us.
The Dunhams had only been in Hawaii for a short time when Barry 0 was born. While it is fair to label Madelyn Dunham as “influential” in later years as her career progressed there, at the time she would have been a relative newcomer, just a year or so into her bank job.
And newspaper announcements don’t carry the doctor’s name, ever. Hospital, sure, but not the doc.