I have found a few old black and white 8x10 photographs from WWll. On the back they state ‘Restricted’ and some others state 'Confidential Official Photograph not to be used for publication by order of the Chief of the Bureau of Aeronautics. A few of them explain whats going on in the picture and a couple are of a Japanese suicide bomber going down and shots being fired at a Naval ship. Very interesting pictures. I actually have more than one question and hope that someone out there can help me. First question is, are these still ‘restricted’? I am hoping to sell them but dont want to do anything that goes against our military! Any idea as to thier worth and where would I go to try to sell them? Thanks so much for any help you many have to offer!
You don’t give enough information in your post to determine if the pictures are still “Restricted”.
Usually, in the case of drawings, maps and photographs, (at least under the American information classification and handling system)
the word “Restricted” would have with it other words, or possibly numbers, indicating what program it related to.
For example, a picture of a Japanese Field Radio might well have written on the back of it “Restricted”:“Melon” 170/14j/6523-xxxxx.
All of which would mean something like: "this belongs to the Melon program, relates to file 14 of the “Japan info” desk, element 170 in file 14, tracking diary number 6523, individual item number xxxxx.
Without knowing details like that it becomes difficult in the extreme to know if a document or image would today be as restricted as it may well have been at the end of WW2.
As to where to sell them, any serious militaria dealer would be interested, if the documents have a clearly established and legal provenance.
I’d think that if such extra details as I’ve given theoretical example of here were not present on the pictures, then the chances are the photographs are only low-level classification and thus safe to sell to a collector. For the sake of simplicity, I’ve not mentioned the 30 year rule, because 30 years have long since passed.
Kind Regards, Uyraell.