What was going on when I was born?

The sentencing of Senator Harrison A. Williams Jr. of New Jersey on his Abscam bribery conviction was postponed for at least two weeks yesterday because of a hernia condition that his doctor said suddenly required emergency surgery. The postponement came just three hours before the 52-year-old Senator was to have been sentenced. Surgery was performed this afternoon, and Mr. Williams was reported to be in satisfactory condition. An attorney for Mr. Williams said the year-old hernia condition had been ''aggravated'' when the Senator slipped and fell on the ice Monday morning outside his home in Bedminster, N.J. The attorney, George J. Koelzer, said in an interview that a surgeon, Dr. Philip D. Wiedel, had Mr. Williams admitted to Presbyterian Hospital in Manhattan later Monday ''on an emergency basis.'' Dr. Wiedel performed the 45-minute operation.

From interviews with people who live in this small mountain village and surrounding hamlets, it is clear that a massacre of major proportions occurred here last month. In some 20 mud brick huts here, this reporter saw the charred skulls and bones of dozens of bodies buried under burned-out roofs, beams and shattered tiles. There were more along the trail leading through the hills into the village, and at the edge of a nearby cornfield were the remains of 14 young men, women and children. In separate interviews during a two-week period in the rebelcontrolled northern part of Morazan Province, 13 peasants said that all these, their relatives and friends, had been killed by Government soldiers of the Atlacatl Battalion in a sweep in December. 733 Victims Listed The villagers have compiled a list of the names, ages and villages of 733 peasants, mostly children, women and old people, who they say were murdered by the Government soldiers. The Human Rights Commission of El Salvador, which works with the Roman Catholic Church, puts the number at 926.

Citing poor earnings in refining operations, the Exxon Corporation, the Standard Oil Company of California and the Standard Oil Company (Indiana), three of the nation's six largest oil companies, yesterday reported earnings declines for the last quarter of 1981. The declines, compared with the last quarter of 1980, ranged from 4.5 percent at Standard of Indiana to 20.5 percent at Exxon. However, Exxon's figures reflected a large accounting loss because of currency transactions. ''The figures are telling you that the refining business is still under pressure, especially overseas,'' said Constantine Fliakos, an industry analyst at Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith Inc. In most refining markets, demand from retailers of petroleum products or industrial users remains too weak for the companies to raise their prices or to operate refineries at volumes high enough for real efficiency.

THE United States Department of Agriculture is expected soon to adopt a regulation that will allow the meat industry to include bits of ground-up bone in processed meats without labeling it as such. If the regulation is adopted, it would be the latest move in a fiveyear-old controversy involving meat processors, who say they are now unfairly restricted in what they can use in their products, and a number of vocal consumers, who contend that the regulation would allow meat companies to mislead shoppers. The Agriculture Department has sometimes sided with the consumers in the dispute and sometimes with the producers. Ground bone is a byproduct - invisible to the naked eye -that results when scraps of meat are removed from beef and hog carcasses by machine. Under the current Agriculture Department regulation, ground-up bone, mixed with scraps of ground-up meat, can replace up to 20 percent of the meat in hot dogs, bologna, liverwurst and a host of other processed meats, including canned chili con carne and spaghetti with meat sauce. However, any product containing ground bone must be clearly labeled, and the exact percentage of bone must be prominently stated.

The British Government announced today that unemployment in January passed three million for the first time. The news touched off a fresh storm of criticism of the economic policies of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. ''Above three million'' proclaimed the Standard newspaper tonight in big black type. In the House of Commons, Mrs. Thatcher was greeted this afternoon with shouts of ''resign.''

''Contrary to some of the wild charges you may have heard, this Administration has not and will not turn its back on America's elderly or America's poor.

President Reagan, vowing to stand by his tax cuts, proposed a sweeping plan to transfer $47 billion in Federal programs to state and local governments. In his first State of the Union address , Mr. Reagan suggested that the Government turn ove r to the states the food-stamps and aid-to-dependent-children pro grams, taking upon itself, in return, all responsibility for Med icaid. (Page A1.) The fiscal policy Mr. Reagan outlined would produ ce larger budget deficits than his advisers recommended. (A19. ) Business executives, with few exceptions, gave the President high marks for his comments. (A19.) Continued high budget deficits threaten the economic recovery that the President has forecast for the second half of 1982, Paul A. Volcker, chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, told the Joint Economic Committee of Congress. Rejecting Administration criticism, he insisted that it is the deficit outlook, not the Fed's tight monetary policy, that is causing high interest rates to persist. (A1.)

New York City officials, in an abrupt reversal, decided yesterday not to change the method by which they compute the value of cooperative apartment buildings for tax purposes. The proposed change, which became known last Thursday, would have meant increases of about 15 percent a year in the property-tax bills for residents of 1,000 cooperative buildings around the city. Officials estimated that there were 85,000 apartments in those buildings.

The Democrats challenged President Reagan's assertions of progress tonight, contending that the basic theme of the first year of his term had been ''unfairness'' - to the poor and the elderly, to young families seeking homes, to small businessmen and to farmer s. National, state and local officeholders made the party's case in a television Excerpts from reply, page A18. program taped before Mr. Reagan's televised State of the Union Message to Congress and shown afterward. It was the first time a party out of power was given a chance to answer a President the same night he spoke on all three commercial networks and public television, and with a program it controlled. Former Vice President Walter F. Mondale called the cuts in Federal programs ''not a conservative program, but a radical program.'' Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts said Mr. Reagan's tax program had helped only the rich. Lieut. Gov. Madeleine M. Kunin of Vermont said his program was forgetting the Federal responsibility to insure ''equality for people in this country.''

President Reagan, in his first State of the Union Message, vowed today to stick with the tax cuts that lie at the heart of his economic recovery program, and he announced a sweeping plan to give states and localities control over Federal programs that now cost $47 billion a year. Proposing to rearrange the relationship between the Federal Government Transcript of message, page A16. and the states with ''a single, bold stroke,'' Mr. Reagan called for a ''financially equal swap.'' Under the plan, the Federal Government would give up its responsibility for food stamps and payments to poor families with dependent children, the two cornerstone programs in the Federal welfare system. Broad Transfer of Responsibilities In return, Mr. Reagan said, the Government would relieve the states of any financial responsiblity for Medicaid, starting in the fiscal year 1984.

In the male-dominated society of Saudi Arabia, religion, government, business, finance and the media are the almost exclusive preserves of men. In tradition and still largely in fact, women are expected to hide behind a black veil and stay at hometo rear the c hildren who represent the future of this thinly populated kin gdom. Despite their inferior social status, however, Saudi women have plenty of money - an estimated 30 to 40 percent of the hundreds of billions of dollars of private wealth in this country - and the Koran guarantees them personal control over it. As a result, banks run by women and catering solely to women have begun to spring up in the major cities of Saudi Arabia. This is an unusual development in a country governed by strict interpretations of Islamic fundamentalism.

Paul A. Volcker, chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, warned the Administration and Congress today that the prospect of continued large Federal budget deficits threatens the economic recovery President Reagan has forecast for this year. In rejecting recent criticism of the Federal Reserve by President Reagan and Treasury Secretary Donald T. Regan, Mr. Volcker said in Congressional testimony that big deficits - not the Fed's tight-money policy - were a key cause of persistent high interest rates and the chief threat to a recovery. Mr. Volcker's comments were his strongest so far about the problems the nation's economy will face if future deficits are not reduced. Without any additional spending cuts or tax increases, budget deficits have been projected by Administration officials and others at $95 billion for the current 1982 fiscal year and well over $100 billion annually in the years ahead.