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= Murder of Kensaburo Oshima =

Kensaburo (Kanesaburo) Oshima  (1855-1942) was a Japanese American immigrant who was killed while living in an American incarceration camp during World War II. Oshima was shot by a guard of the Fort Sill incarceration camp after attempting to scale the camp’s fence in a fit of mania.

Background and Detainment
Kanesaburo Oshima was born in Japan in 1855 and later moved to the United States where he married Matin Oshima and had eleven children, five sons and six daughters. Oshima and his family lived in Hawaii on Kona Island where he owned a store and rented a home.

December 7th 1941 Oshima was arrested for being a Japanese Consular Agent and was detained at Kilauea military camp and later spent time in the Sand Island detention camp in O’ahu before being sent to San Francisco. During this time he was split up from his family. After arriving in California on March 20th, 1942, Oshima was sent to Fort Sill, Oklahoma. During his time at Fort Sill, Oshima was burdened with fears of deportation, unsettled business debts and most of all, the unknown status of his large family. All of this pressure is claimed to be a large factor in Oshima's death.

Death
On May 12th, 1942 Oshima was shot dead after attempting to climb the fences surrounding the camp. Early that morning Oshima walked up to the first of two fences surrounding the camp and started to climb. Fellow internees tried to pull him down but Oshima was too fast and climbed to the other side. After scaling the first fence, guards arrived on the scene and urged Oshima to stop, who reluctantly kept going. As Oshima headed for the second fence the guard following him pulled out his pistol and fired at Oshima, none of the shots hit him although this did startle Oshima who started to run towards the nearest guard tower and try to climb the fence around it. There Oshima was shot in the back of the head at the top of the fence.

Notability
On May 24th, 1944, the United States department of state released a memorandum to the Spanish Embassy regarding the deaths of two internees at the Fort Sill concentration camp, one of them being Kanseaburo Oshima. The Spanish embassy oversaw conveying the details of the event to the Japanese government, which had concerns over the deaths. The memorandum goes into detail on the events leading to Oshima’s death and aims to justify the actions taken to ensure Oshima did not escape.

Oshima also caught attention recently in 2019 when protestors gathered outside Fort Sill to protest it being used in the future as a detention center for illegal immigrants. The protest included almost 500 people, including 25 Buddhist monks who lived at the camp, who marched to the fort to place a lei on an artillery gun in honor of Oshima.