It sounds like your uncle got to Leyte in the waning stages of the war...had he been there in late 1940/early 1941, i’m sure he would’ve held a big grudge, had he made it out alive...
He was in graves registration. He started in New Guinea and worked his way from place to place.
The guy only had one eye, so he couldn’t be in the infantry, so he picked up people, buried them, dug them up again and buried them again. It was grotesque work.
And just because he couldn’t be in the infantry, doesn’t mean he did not get shot at. There were three brothers in that family who went to war. One brother went into Normandy, the other up the Boot of Italy…and he went to the pacific. His was the worst of the three. The stuff those guys went through as “kids” was just horrible.