What was going on when I was born?

The United States has warned Iran that it will suffer consequences if Americans held in Lebanon are executed, Reagan Administration officials said today. They said the warning was conveyed in a message from Secretary of State George P. Shultz through the Swiss Government, which represents United States interests in Iran. The message stemmed from concern that Shiite Moslems holding the Americans were planning to execute some of them. Officials would not provide the exact date of Mr. Shultz's letter, but said it was sent in the last six weeks. It was said to be firm, but unspecific as to what actions might be taken.

The Financial Corporation of America said today that it lost $512.1 million in the fourth quarter, largely because of an increase in its reserves against bad loans and real estate property by $472.5 million. The results, delayed for a month by an extended review of the company's problem assets, gave Financial the biggest annual loss ever for a thrift institution, at $590.5 million. A year ago, the Continental Illinois National Bank and Trust Company reported the biggest annual loss ever by a financial institution, at $1.1 billion. William J. Popejoy, Financial's chairman and chief executive, said that the company and its new auditors, Peat Marwick, had analyzed the company's problem loans ''to the extent humanly possible.'' He said, however, that he could not rule out future increases in the loss reserves.

TUESDAY, APRIL 2, 1985 International Japan made ''new commitments'' on trade, the Administration said, but it did not detail them. While weekend talks left many matters unresolved, Japanese leaders tentatively agreed to increase access to the Japanese market, particularly for telecommunications products, officials said. (Page A1.) The trade dispute has begun to focus on how Japanese policy will be carried out by the Tokyo bureaucracy. (D4.) Whether Japanese makers of color TV sets must stand trial on charges of violating American antitrust laws by selling at artificially low prices will be decided by the Supreme Court. The case dates from the early 1970's. (D4.) Companies Sir James Goldsmith would offer to buy Crown Zellerbach for at least $1.14 billion, he said, if the company acts by Monday to do away with a harsh anti-takeover provision. Otherwise, he warned, he would seek a proxy fight. Zellerbach said it would not be ''hurried, bullied or intimidated.'' (D1.)

WHATEVER finally comes of President Reagan's proposed ''Star Wars'' defense against nuclear missiles, current research at the nation's weapons laboratories promises a bumper crop of spinoff discoveries and gadgets, many of which will spur progress in medicine, industry and basic science. Scientists at such weapons laboratories as Lawrence Livermore in California, Los Alamos in New Mexico and Oak Ridge in Tennessee say their projects will benefit pursuits as arcane as the analysis of supernova explosions and as mundane as the processing of vegetables. Instruments, machines and ideas being developed in connection with weapons programs may help detect cancer in its early stages, screen people for genetic defects, custom-grind special contact lenses and win back the America's Cup. Of the $100 million the Government is expected to spend on Strategic Defense Initiative research in the coming year, most will go for projects having little immediate bearing on peaceful applications. Critics of the Presidential initiative argue that the money would be better spent directly on civilian research.

A caption in Metropolitan Report on Saturday under a picture of a young girl on a seesaw at Sagamore Park in Teaneck, N.J., misidentified her. She was Jessica Waxenberg.

A recent issue of The Jackson Advocate, a black newspaper here, carried an article and a photograph reporting that Fred L. Banks Jr., the newest black county judge, had been sworn in by Justice Reuben Anderson, the first black member of the Mississippi Supreme Court. Next to it was an article with the headline, ''Cross Burned - Youth Abducted and Beaten in Strife-Torn Durant.'' Those articles symbolize the contrasts in racial developments in present-day Mississippi. Interviews across the state found new and changing attitudes, on the one hand, and a throwback to the old order, on the other. There have been extensive political gains, most people say, but individual relationships and contact between the races have lagged. The interviews found that 20 years after some of the biggest victories of the civil rights movement, Mississippi stands as a reminder of both the progress that has been made and the problems that remain. The fact that many people, blacks and whites, died so that blacks could use a restroom in a public place or walk through the front door of a restaurant and be served is somewhat lost, or at least blurred, by the amount of change.

TUESDAY, APRIL 2, 1985 International The United States warned Iran that it would suffer the consequences if abducted Americans being held in Lebanon were executed, Reagan Administration officials said. Five Americans in Lebanon are still being held prisoner by Shiite extremists, who the United States believes have close links to Iran. (Page A1, Column 3.) Black police officers in South Africa are finding their position among their fellow blacks more precarious than ever. About 40 percent of the 45,000- member South African police force is black. As unrest has grown, four black policemen have been slain and 56 have been wounded, according to Government figures. (A1:5.)

A two-tier pay system providing lower wages for new workers was accepted in agreements reached this weekend between the teamsters' union and major trucking concerns and between Pan American World Airways and its flight attendants. A tentative three-year labor contract announced Sunday night by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and trucking operators provides major concessions, including the new wage structure and virtual elimination of the annual cost-of-living raise, according to industry sources. The Independent Union of Flight Attendants also agreed to major concessions to Pan Am, including more flexible work rules and starting pay for new attendants that is 37 percent lower than the pay at which current attendants started. Two-tier wage agreements provide either permanently lower pay for those hired under the new contract, as in the Pan Am agreement, or lower pay that eventually rises to match that of senior workers, as in the trucking agreement. The two-tier structures are part of a broad effort that employers in numerous industries have used in recent years to reduce wage costs.

For a brief moment, it was just like old times. The leader of the Transport Workers Union was warning that the subways could stop rolling if management remained intransigent. Management scoffed. Around town the nervous talk began. ''Did you hear there's going to be a subway strike?'' one clerk in a West Side bookstore was overheard saying to another last week. Then, from Albany, came intervention, in the nick of time.

IN a recent rapprochement, psychologists and political scientists are merging disciplines to form a new field, political psychology. The mutual interest comes from psychologists who are applying their skills to the political arena and political scientists who are coming to appreciate the importance of psychology in the world of politics. Political psychology is still in the main an academic discipline rather than an active force in international diplomacy or domestic politics. But current research indicates that the discipline can yield valuable information about Soviet behavior, for example, and the problems inherent in a military policy based on deterence. Proponents of the discipline assert that it has the potential of bringing greater clarity and soundness to government decisions and perhaps even of improving the manner in which governments perceive and deal with each other. Much of the new psychological interest has centered on international politics.

The yellow police van pulled to a stop across the dirt road in one of South Africa's black townships, and an officer bearing a rifle tumbled out to block the path of the approaching sedan. To the rear, a second police car cut off retreat. The sedan's occupants were trapped. In another incident, this time on the border with the independent, black- ruled country of Lesotho, a South African officer searched a private car entering the country and found documents that he believed subversive, so the driver was summoned for questioning by a man who identified himself as a member of the security police. The papers were seized.

A Senate Armed Services subcommittee voted tonight to approve production of 21 more MX missiles next year, rejecting President Reagan's request for 48, according to Congressional sources. The vote by the Republican-controlled Subcommittee on Strategic and Theater Nuclear Forces, was the first assault on the President's missile-building program after he had a series of heady victories in Congress over the last two weeks. Voting 7 to 4 in a closed session, the subcommittee turned back a proposal by Senator Sam Nunn, Democrat of Georgia, to cut the program more deeply in the 1986 fiscal year, producing only 12 of the intercontinental missiles and slashing the planned size of the MX missile force to 40 from 100. The sources said the subcommittee also resisted proposals to make major cuts in the President's missile defense research program, known as the Strategic Defense Initiative, or ''Star Wars.''