Amphibious Training Base in Morro Bay, World War II week by week

The third anniversary of the outbreak of war in Europe was coming up on September 1 and the Telegram-Tribune had a special supplement including precious maps due out that day. Word was put out before one of Franklin Roosevelt’s fireside chats early in the war that listeners ought to have an atlas handy to follow the speech. According to biographer Doris Kearns Goodwin in her book “No Ordinary Time” many shops sold out.
Both Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt had map rooms to keep track of current operations.
The German Army was throwing an estimated million men into the effort to take Stalingrad.
It was dangerous on the home front as well as this story from 70 years ago outlines. Work building the Amphibious Training Base at Morro Bay resulted in at least four deaths according to the website Old Morro Bay.
August 31, 1942

Atascaderan Killed in Morro Slide

His body crushed by tons of rock, James Alexander Willis Smiley, 37, of Atascadero was instantly killed Saturday afternoon in a landslide on Morro Rock.
Huge boulders, thundering down from the top of the rock caught the young Morro Bay Naval Base workman as he worked at a spot 75 feet up the side of the rock, spectators said. Other workmen at the base of the rock managed to reach safety.
Smiley, who was preparing fora powder blast, was drilling a hole for a dynamite cap about 75 feet from the base of the rock where the breakwater is being built, according to Coroner L.L. Buechler.
When recovered from beneath the boulders, his body had been badly crushed and the left arm had been severed above the elbow.
Cause of the landslide which started near the top of the rock was unknown.
The naval base worker resided in Atascadero on Portola avenue. He was born in Kansas March 22, 1905.

James Smiley was married with three children.

For a collection of photos from a book about amphibious training, like the one below, click here.

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