What was going on when I was born?

TOKYO T HERE was a time when Detroit set out to rule the world. American auto makers built up domestic production, started to export and then followed up by moving plants overseas, to make cars and trucks within the markets they served. With this one-two-three punch, Detroit's Big Three became synonymous with American industrial strength, unquestioned leaders in the automotive field. No more, of course. Chrysler is on its knees and both General Motors and Ford have reported huge losses recently. The new world appears to belong to Japan. In 1980, this nation pulled ahead of the American auto industry for the first time, producing 11 million cars and trucks, up 10 percent, while the United States industry turned out just 7.8 million, down 30 percent. Imports captured more then one-fifth of the American market itself, and 78 percent of them were made in Japan. Those represent punches one and two, and on both sides of the Pacific their success is unquestioned, the momentum they have built, unchallenged.

-------------------------------------------------------------------- Annette Insdorf, who teaches film at Yale University, was Abel Gance's translator at the Telluride Film Festival. By ANNETTE INSDORF The provocative combination of Napoleon Bonaparte, a pioneering filmmaker, an indefatigable film scholar and an enthusiastic advocate named Francis Ford Coppola requires an appropriate stage on which the dramatic history of nations as well as films can be played out. These individuals - Corsican, French, British, and American respectively - have found their site: Radio City Music Hall, where the reconstructed version of Abel Gance's groundbreaking 1927 ''Napoleon'' will have its New York premiere Friday, Saturday and Sunday. The film, prized by scholars and other filmmakers for its innovative techniques, traces the career of Napoleon from his school days to his military triumphs. It is also a love story in which the hero of the battlefield is reduced to a fumbling swain.

ART in the the suburbs has found a new base of operations - in the local library. Those hushed sanctums, once reserved for scholarly pursuits, now quake with rock music or vibrate gently to the sound of chamber ensembles. Modern-dance troupes vie with budding baritones, poets, celebrity lecturers and theatrical productions for bookings. Walls are laden with revolving exhibitions of frequently traditional, but occasionally avant-garde, painting and photography. As a result, ''people are in the library who never would have come before,'' said a staff member in New Rochelle. There, former patrons of facilities in Larchmont and Scarsdale are coming to the new downtown New Rochelle facility. In Yonkers, ''We have standing-roomonly for black history and concerts,'' according to a spokesman. In packed auditoriums around the county, film devotees are engrossed in vintage John Ford, contemporary Lina Wertmuller or offbeat originals by local filmmakers. The very fact that art galleries, workshop space, storage for movies, recordings and pictures, auditoriums, lecture and meeting rooms have become an integral part of new library construction and old library modernization is testimony to the changes that have taken place.

FREEHOLD TOWNSHIP ALTHOUGH New Jersey has spent more than 10 years and some $7 million planning a reservoir along the Manasquan River, the project may have to be re-evaluated because the river is so heavily polluted. A report by the Federal Evironmental Protection Agency, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times last week, disclosed that leachate from an abandoned landfill was ''heavily contaminating the Manasquan River'' with hazardous chemicals, including polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB's) and benzene. Furthermore, an unannounced inspection by the Freehold Township Health Officer here last week showed that ''inadequately treated sewage'' was being discharged into the river from one of several treatment plants known to have been regularly polluting the Manasquan. Some health officials in the area oppose the reservoir because of the quality of the water that would be used. ''The Environmental Protection Agency has done a very thorough study,'' said R. Chadwick Taylor, the township Health Officer, who made the inspection last week. ''But so far, there have been no longterm studies of the river waters to show a trend in the quality one way or the other. We in public health are not too crazy about the idea of a reservoir.''

R ONALD REAGAN takes office this week with no shortage of economic problems and no shortage of advice on what to do about them. Inflation, productivity, energy, growth - they're all crowding for attention. The New York Times turned to the four regular contributors to its Economic Affairs column and asked them two questions: What are the most important things Mr. Reagan should do about the economy? What are the most important things to avoid? The contributors are Lester C. Thurow, 42 years old, economics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Rudolph G. Penner, 45, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, and Paul W. MacAvoy, 47, and William Nordhaus, 40, economics professors at Yale. Their replies follow: By LESTER C. THUROW It is your job to tame the four horsemen of the economic apocalypse - inflation, unemployment, falling productivity and easily disrupted energy supplies. But neither you nor any other President is a match for these four horsemen. You must set an order of priority and tame them one or two at a time.

-------------------------------------------------------------------- Hans Koning is a novelist; he has assisted in the filming of his novels ''A Walk With Love and Death'' and ''The Revolutionary.'' By HANS KONING In the movie industry, 1980 is likely to be remembered as the year of the gold-plated dud. From Steven Spielberg's ''1941'' to John Landis's ''The Blues Brothers'' to the most resounding flop in recent memory, Michael Cimino's ''Heaven's Gate,'' Hollywood turned out a series of films afflicted with what might best be described as terminal bloat. Directors with one or two successes behind them were encouraged to spend millions and then more millions. Studio production chiefs seemed to have lost all sense of artistic and financial control. Mr. Cimino's $36 million ''Heaven's Gate'' was an ''unqualified disaster'' in the estimation of Vincent Canby. Mr. Spielberg's $40 million ''1941'' was described by Mr. Canby as ''about as much fun as a 40-pound wristwatch''. Mr. Landis's $30 million ''The Blues Brothers'' was condemned by Janet Maslin for its ''hollowness.'' These may be extreme examples, but they do not exhaust the list.

The Federal bureaucrats assigned to ease the paperwork forced on Americans have come up with some numbers. This year, they found, Americans will spend 1.276 billion hours filling out 5,000 different kinds of Government forms. If the work paid $10 an hour, the payroll for the job would be $12.76 billion. The work averages out to five and a half hours per man, woman and child.

TRENTON GOVERNOR BYRNE ended his seventh annual State of the State message to the Legislature last week by quoting Sean O'Casey: ''Let the timid tiptoe through the way where the paler blossoms grow; my feet shall be where the redder roses grow, though they bear long thorns, sharp and piercing, thick among them!'' By this selection, Mr. Byrne indicated that he knew his last year in office was not going to be easy. The words of the Irish dramatist were an invitation to the lawmakers to join him in tackling some tough problems still facing the state. But before the day ended, the playwright's words were turned back on Mr. Byrne, and it became clear that he and the Legislature, which includes a number of candidates for his job, are already on separate paths. (Under the law, the Governor of New Jersey is limited to two successive terms.)

President Ferdinand E. Marcos released 341 prisoners today, hours after ending the state of martial law under which he had ruled the Philippines for eight years and four months. In an order releasing the prisoners, Mr. Marcos said that 159 of those freed today were people charged with violating national security and public order measures and 182 were common criminals. Mr. Marcos promised a month ago, when he announced his plan to end martial law, that the military tribunals established during the eight-year period would be disbanded. He said that in the future detainees would be tried in civilian courts.

The Minskoff family, which runs one of the city's oldest building organizations, is planning new projects in the metropolitan area as it makes changes at the top and welcomes a third generation as junior partners. The changes come after what appears to have been a holding pattern. The Minskoffs sold their ownership position in the new office building at 650 Fifth Avenue to the Pahlavi Foundation several years ago and also a fully assembled construction site on Third Avenue between 54th and 55th Streets a year ago. The youngest of the three brothers who have been the senior partners in the postwar period, Myron A. Minskoff, who is 63 years old, is breaking away. He will form his own construction management and consulting organization, Myron A. Minskoff Inc.

THE Connecticut economy performed well during the short, sharp 1980 recession, which for the state proved so mild that several economists expect businesses to endure the current wave of high interest rates with little trouble. These observers also envisage rapid economic growth in the later years of this decade as the nation invests in new capital goods and military hardware, major industries in the state. As measured by the unemployment rate, Connecticut had a banner year. Seasonally adjusted unemployment fell to 4.7 percent in March, reached 6.4 percent in September, and then settled at 6.3 percent in November, the most recent month for which figures are available. The national rate for the same month, in contrast, was 7.5 percent. ''Connecticut did not suffer as severely as it did in the early 1970's,'' said David C. Powers, an economist at Northeast Utilities and president of the New England Economic Project, ''and nowhere near as badly as in 1973 through 1975,'' when the unemployment rate exceeded 10 percent for several months. But as Edwin L. Caldwell, vice president and economist at the Connecticut Bank and Trust Company, pointed out, seasonally adjusted nonagricultural employment, a measure of the number of actual jobs, fell 2.3 percent from February to June before beginning to recover. Manufacturing employment decreased 2.2 percent, to 425,000 jobs, accounting for much of the loss.

WAYSOFESCAPE By Graham Greene. 320 pp. New York: Simon and Schuster. $12.95. By JAMES ATLAS ''ASORT OF LIFE,'' the first volume of Graham Greene's autobiography, was not equivocal in its title alone. Depicted there was a typical Georgian childhood among the British intellectual middle class, a world of nannies, eccentric aunts and uncles, doting if remote parents who fostered an early love of literature, unhappy school experiences followed by an Oxford education: in short, the world depicted - with some variations - in Cyril Connolly's ''Enemies of Promise,'' in Evelyn Waugh's ''A Little Learning,'' in Peter Quennell's ''The Marble Foot.'' Typical, perhaps, yet hardly complacent; on several occasions in his youth, the author claimed, he had --------------------------------------------------------------------- played Russian roulette with a loaded revolver discovered in his brother's cupboard.