There is oxygen detectable by spectroscopy within the sun's plasma created through nuclear fusion. The sun uses nuclear fusion to create more massive atoms while extracting energy in the process. In the sun's core, 4 hydrogen nuclei can fuse together to form the isotope helium-4. Two helium-4 isotopes can later fuse into one beryllium-8 isotope. Later in the fusion cycle the beryllium-8 isotope can fuse with another helium-4 isotope to create one carbon-12 isotope. Finally, to get to an oxygen-16 isotope in the fusion reaction a carbon-12 isotope fuses to another helium-4 atom.

sources:

http://astrosun2.astro.cornell.edu/academics/courses/astro201/hydrogen_burn.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple-alpha_process

http://www.astro.umass.edu/~myun/teaching/a100_old/longlecture14.html

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