Boston: US President Barack Obama's father had intended to put his unborn son up for adoption as the senior Obama tried to appease US immigration officials who raised concerns about him having two wives as well as his "playboy ways", a new book has revealed.
Details about Obama senior have emerged in a book by Boston Globe reporter Sally Jacobs.
Titled 'The Other Barack, The Bold and Reckless Life of President Obama's Father,' the biography is slated for release next week.
"In the spring of 1961, President Obama's father revealed a plan for his unborn son that might have changed the course of American political history," Jacobs said in an article in the Boston Globe.
The elder Obama, who was at the time a sophomore at the University of Hawaii, had come under scrutiny by federal immigration officials who were concerned that he had more than one wife.
When questioned by the school's foreign student adviser, the 24-year-old Obama insisted that he had divorced his wife in his native Kenya.
Although his new wife, Ann Dunham, was five months pregnant with their child 'Barack Obama II', Obama declared that they intended to put their child up for adoption.
"Subject (Obama senior) got his USC (United States citizen) wife 'Hapai' (Hawaiian for pregnant) and although they were married they do not live together and Miss Dunham is making arrangements with the Salvation Army to give the baby away," according to a memo describing the conversation with Obama senior written by Lyle Dahling, an administrator in the Honolulu office of the US Immigration and Naturalization Service.
The Salvation Army had operated nearly a dozen residential maternity homes throughout the US and made arrangements for adoption through local agencies.
Dunham, who died in 1995, was 18 years old when she gave birth to Barack Obama.
While neither Obama nor his wife put their baby up for adoption, it is unclear whether the young couple actually considered such a step, or the elder Obama made the story up in order to appease immigration officials who at the time were considering his request for an extension of his stay in the United States, Jacobs said.
"But his statement provides a unique glimpse into the relationship between the president’s parents and the fragility of his connection to the father whom he would little know," Jacobs added.
PTI
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