[1] In 1962, Soetoro, then a civilian employee of the Indonesian Army Topographic Service, obtained an East–West Center grant for graduate study in geography at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

[12][13] Soetoro, a geographer,[12][14] returned to Indonesia in 1966[15] to help map Western New Guinea[16] for the Indonesian government, while Dunham and her son Barack Obama moved into her parents' house in Honolulu to complete her studies.

[19] The family initially lived for two and a half years in a modest stucco and red tile house in a newly built neighborhood in Menteng Dalam village in South Jakarta[19][20][21] and owned a new Japanese motorcycle.

[22] Dunham worked as assistant director of the Indonesia-America Friendship Institute[23] while Obama attended the Indonesian-language Santo Fransiskus Asisi (St. Francis of Assisi) Catholic School.

[19][20][21] In 1970, with a new job in government relations[24] at Union Oil Company,[1][16][12] Soetoro moved his family two miles north to a rented house,[19][21] with a car replacing their motorcycle.

"[33][34] In a 2007 article, Chicago Tribune foreign correspondent Kim Barker reported that Soetoro "was much more of a free spirit than a devout Muslim, according to former friends and neighbors.

[35][36] Soetoro died at Pertamina Central Hospital in Jakarta, Indonesia, on 2 March 1987 (some source reported the year as 1993), due to liver failure and secondary to unreported causes at the time of this note, at the age of 52 and was buried at Tanah Kusir Cemetery.