I was thinking last week that I knew a lot about Barack Obama II, who was born on Oahu in 1961, attended Punahou and became our 44th U.S. president. I knew much less about his father.
Last week I decided to explore Barack Obama Sr.’s three years in Hawaii, and I was surprised to learn several things about him that I didn’t know:
>> He was the first student from Africa to attend the University of Hawaii at Manoa.
>> He pronounced his first name differently from his son.
>> He was very visible in Honolulu, speaking about politics and Africa at churches and other forums, and writing letters to the newspapers.
>> He graduated with a 3.9 GPA at UH and went on to Harvard.
Obama Sr. was born in Kenya on June 18, 1934. He and 80 others were selected in 1959 to get college degrees in the U.S. and return to help Kenya’s future development.
Obama chose UH after reading in an American magazine about our racial tolerance and attitudes, he told The Honolulu Advertiser and Honolulu Star-Bulletin, which interviewed him and other foreign students several times.
The 25-year-old said that the near lack of racial prejudice in Hawaii was noteworthy. “No one here seems to be conscious of color,” Obama said. “Various races get along better here than on the mainland and in parts of Africa.”
But, he added, Hawaii is not really a melting pot. Instead, he noticed various races largely stuck together but coexisted peacefully with other groups.
Although he personally had little trouble, Obama said there was racial discrimination among the groups. It was, he said, “rather strange, even rather amusing, to see Caucasians discriminated against here.”
“There is, however, one thing other nations can learn from us,” Obama said. “Here in the government and elsewhere, all races work together toward the common good for Hawaii.”
Easygoing island residents
The bespectacled student said he was also pleased with the easygoing manner of island residents. “People here are so much more relaxed than elsewhere. You don’t see them hurrying around to do things as in New York City or London. And people here are very friendly.”
Obama received some money from Kenya but had to supplement it with money he earned as a clerk, which he had done for several years in the capital city of Nairobi.
Like most new arrivals, he found the mental picture he had drawn of Hawaii was not quite true. “When I first came here, I expected to find a lot of Hawaiians all dressed in native clothing, and I expected native dancing and that sort of thing. But I was surprised to find a cosmopolitan city with races getting along with each other.”
Locals often asked him similar questions about Kenya. “People are very interested in the Mau Mau rebellion and about race relations in Kenya.
“Others asked me how many wives each man has back home, what we eat, how I dress at home, how we live and whether we have cars.”
High living costs and the hot weather were Obama’s only two complaints about the islands. Nairobi is generally 10 or more degrees cooler than Honolulu. After a year Obama felt he had acclimated, although he was surprised there was no winter here.
Hawaii’s high prices presented some difficulties. He figured the money he has saved would stretch out for only around two semesters. After that he would either seek a part-time job or apply for a scholarship.
Obama spoke to many groups or served on panel discussions during his three years in Hawaii. Most were about politics in Africa. His name was in the newspapers 48 times during that period, a rarity for UH students.
Friendship
Former Gov. Neil Abercrombie and Obama both arrived at UH at the same time in 1959. Abercrombie introduced himself to Obama and the two became friends.
Their friendship will be a chapter in a book Abercrombie is working on, titled “Always on Offense: A Political Biography,” which is due out in 2025.
One of their favorite hangouts was Kuhio Grill on King Street. If you tipped the waitress generously, she would bring plates of pupu to the table. “The atmosphere was perfect for the two of us,” Abercrombie believes. “Like him, it was open, lively, loud and boisterous.
“If Barack was in the room, you knew he was there. He was very voluble. He always had an opinion, and you could count on his sharing it with you. He always had facts to back up his opinions.
“He had a rich, booming, resonant voice. He was full of vigor and a joy to be around.
“We were just a bunch of kids. We had no idea I would one day be governor and he would be father of a U.S. president.”
Wife No. 2?
Obama was married in Kenya in 1954. He and his Kenyan wife had one child and another on the way when he came to UH. He was living at the Atherton YMCA when he met Stanley Ann Dunham (1942-1995) in a Russian-language class in 1960. He told her he was divorced.
They married on Feb. 2, 1961, in Wailuku, Maui, and Dunham gave birth to a future president on Aug. 4, 1961. They would divorce in 1964.
Abercrombie remembers the son’s birth at Kapiolani Medical Center. “They had the same name,” Abercrombie said. “The son was called Barry growing up here, but in adulthood their first names came to be pronounced differently.”
“The father emphasized the first syllable (‘BARE-rick’). The son emphasized the second (‘Ba-RACK’).”
“I’m not quite sure how that happened,” Abercrombie continues. “I think it probably was when he went to the mainland, people started saying ‘Ba-RACK’ rather than ‘BARE-rick.’”
Abercrombie speculates that somewhere along the line, the younger Obama’s friends called him “Ba-RACK” and Obama didn’t correct them.
Dan Inouye had a similar thing happen, Abercrombie said. “In Hawaii we pronounce his last name as ‘In-NO-way.’
“On the mainland some pronounce it ‘INO-way.’ Inouye never corrected them.”
Obama Sr. received straight A’s at UH and graduated with a business degree in 1962. Harvard offered him a graduate faculty fellowship where he earned a master’s degree in economics. In 1964 he returned to Kenya.
Obama’s dream
His dream was to “shape the destiny of Africa,” he often said. Unfortunately, tribalism in Kenya sidelined his ambition.
“Kenya’s failure to overcome tribalism and work for the common good, like Obama saw in Hawaii, destroyed him,” Abercrombie believes.
“So much of post-colonial Africa ended up the same way, with broken promises and broken dreams. Obama’s life became a tragedy, and for those of us who were his friends, it was heartbreaking.”
Obama died in 1982 in a car accident at age 46. He had eight children with three wives. He would have been 90 last week, if things had turned out differently.
What, Abercrombie wonders, would the elder Obama have thought of his son being president of the Unites States?
“In a paradoxical way, Barack Obama was carrying out his father’s dream. If someone had said to him, ‘You know, your son will be the president one day,’ he would have said, ‘Well, of course. He’s my son.’”
Bob Sigall is the author of the five “The Companies We Keep” books. Contact him at Sigall@Yahoo.com or sign up for his free email newsletter at RearviewMirrorInsider.com.
