Read it myself a long time ago. Was their not a reference to an atomic bomb and Zen in there? He asked whether the atomic bomb dropped on Japan was an “illusion?” correct me.
It did refer to the atomic bomb as illusory. Was t a key point of he book, but I recall it.
He did ask it as a question, though he didn’t exactly mean it literally. He was shooting down a pompous philosophy professor who was claiming that everything was an illusion.
I read it about twenty years ago...it reminded me a lot of a childhood trip to Yellowstone in the early 80s, and it gave me some serious food for thought on how to approach a problem methodically.