What was going on when I was born?

When Ikuo Takeuchi's company asked him to move to a new job far from home, he agreed to go. But he had to leave his family behind so his son could keep his place in a well-known high school. A year later, Mr. Takeuchi collapsed and was hospitalized for severe asthma. When his wife visited his small Tokyo apartment, she found he had not eaten breakfast for six months. Then she saw a bottle of whisky on the table. ''Apparently, he was drinking alone, and I was really concerned,'' said his wife, Yumiko. 'I don't get too worried when he goes out to drink with his colleagues. But when you drink alone, you tend to drink too much.''

The Supreme Court ruled today, 5 to 4, that a worker who resigns from a labor union during a strike may not be penalized by the union for doing so. The decision, which upheld an interpretation of Federal labor law by the National Labor Relations Board, was a setback for organized labor. A number of unions have rules prohibiting resignations when a strike is imminent or in effect. Members who resign and return to work are typically assessed fines equivalent to their earnings during the strike.

''These violent acts constitute a worldwide problem, are not limited by geographical or political boundaries and no nation and no airline of the world is immune to such acts.'' -Assad Kotaite, president of the International Civil Aviation Administration's council. [A1:5.]

In a sharply worded off-the-record speech here, President Reagan's budget director, David A. Stockman, has sounded a new alarm that Federal budget deficits have become intractable and that sizable tax increases may be the only solution ''consistent with fiscal sanity.'' He also said that the Administration, the Republicans in the Senate and, to a greater extent, the Democratic leadership of the House of Representatives had not ''come clean'' with the figures they have been using to calculate the deficit reductions in the two conflicting budget proposals before Congress. If the Securities and Exchange Commission had jurisdiction over the executive and legislative branches in such matters, Mr. Stockman said, ''many of us would be in jail.'' Another Big Deficit Seen The dispute over the budget for the fiscal year 1986 has arisen because of the President's refusal to raise taxes, the House's refusal to eliminate cost-of-living adjustments for Social Security beneficiaries and the Senate's opposition to further reductions in military spending.

In a vote widely regarded as a severe defeat for President Reagan and his civil rights policies, the Senate Judiciary Committee today rejected the nomination of William Bradford Reynolds to be Associate Attorney General. The 10-to-8 vote was quickly followed by two votes in which the committee refused to send the nomination to the Senate floor with either no recommendation or an unfavorable one. This appeared to kill the nomination, although in theory the full Senate could still bring it to the floor by a parliamentary device rarely used in such circumstances. Two Republicans Vote No On the initial tally, two Republicans and all eight Democratic members of the committee voted against Mr. Reynolds, who has been chief of the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department since 1981.

News that Congressional budget negotiations would resume after two days of inactivity sent the Dow Jones industrial average to a record finish. In addition to the budget news, analysts said, stocks were also helped by the strength of the bond market. The Dow, which rose 3.25 points in the previous two days, got as high as 1,334.45 before backtracking and finishing at 1,332.21, for a gain of 8.40.

The House overwhelmingly approved a measure today that would change military law to permit the death penalty for espionage by members of the armed forces in peacetime. The measure, an amendment to the Defense Department's military programs bill, is part of a flurry of legislation prompted by Congressional concern over the arrests of three former Navy men and the son of one of them, a sailor, on espionage charges. The Government has charged that a spy ring led by John A. Walker Jr. smuggled secret Navy documents to the Soviet Union for about 20 years. The amendment was adopted on a voice vote and would change military law, known formally as the Uniform Code of Military Justice, to include a peacetime espionage statute. Two similar bills are now being considered in the Senate.

The United States demanded today that seven Americans missing in Beirut be freed as part of any arrangement for the release of the 39 airliner hostages. The announcement came as the crisis entered its third week amid signs that snags had developed in discussions with the Lebanese Shiite leader, Nabih Berri, and various governments and international organizations on how to resolve the standoff. Mr. Berri has said he is mediating on behalf on the Shiite hijackers who commandeered a Trans World Airlines jet June 14. The hijackers' principal demand has been that Israel free more than 700 mainly Shiite detainees who have been held without charges for up to 19 months. News Blackout Maintainted For a second day, the Reagan Administration maintained a news blackout on diplomatic efforts, which centered on Israel, France, Syria and Mr. Berri.

The National Security Agency chose the American Telephone and Telegraph Company yesterday to supply it with up to $946 million in minicomputers and services for a new, classified project. The contract appeared to be one of the largest for the purchase of sophisticated computer systems by the intelligence community. Officials of the N.S.A., the largest and most secretive intelligence agency in the United States, did not say how the computers would be used. But industry sources and intelligence analysts suggested that the N.S.A. would deploy the machines at its headquarters in Fort Meade, Md., and in field offices around the world and would use them to help encode and decode data flowing through the Government's communication networks.

FRIDAY, JUNE 28, 1985 International The U.S. demanded that 7 Americans missing in Beirut be freed as part of any arrangement for the release of 39 airliner hostages. The announcement was made as the crisis entered its third week amid signs that snags had developed in talks with the Lebanese Shiite leader, Nabih Berri, and various governments and international organizations on how to resolve the standoff. [Page A1, Column 6.] U.S. officials maintained silence on developments in the hostage crisis, canceled briefings on it for members of Congress and tried to mute criticism of the Reagan Administration's policies by frustrated families of the hostages. [A7:6.]

The Canal Street headquarters and the three branches of the failed Golden Pacific National Bank are expected to open today under the management of the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation. Under an agreement reached with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and approved late Wednesday by Judge Mary Johnson Lowe of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, Hongkong and Shanghai will take over the four offices and will assume $117 million in insured deposits of Golden Pacific's clients. It remains unclear how much, if any, other creditors will receive back of the $49 million the bank owes them. Of that amount, $17 million was owed to holders of what have been described as bogus certificates of deposit. Holders of these certificates -called ''yellow certificates'' because they were printed on yellow paper -say that they understood the certificates were fully insured deposits in the bank.

The House voted today to limit any move to use United States combat troops in Nicaragua, but only after the measure had been weakened by a battery of Republican-sponsored amendments. Sponsors said afterward that the vote, 312 to 111, sent a message of caution to the Administration on military involvement in Central America. The Democratic whip, Thomas S. Foley of Washington, the sponsor of the measure, said that while the amended version would ''technically'' not hamper the President, it was a signal that Congress did not want military action without being consulted first. Measure Called a Retreat But many members on both sides of the issue said the diluted measure was a retreat from past House declarations on the use of force.