The parade is seen as an important diplomatic event for the nation. As well as the many world leaders expected to attend, a 300-strong Hong Kong delegation will head to the capital. Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying will lead the delegation and, while the government has yet to issue a full list of names, some prominent local politicians are known to be attending.

They will be joined in Tiananmen Square by Lo Yiu-fai, the 88-year-old boss of a seafood restaurant in Lei Yue Mun. As a young man from the fishing village, he joined the marine detachment of the brigade in 1943, returning home after the war in 1946.

"The country remembers us," the octogenarian said of the event. "I'm 88 and my legs get numb when I stand for too long. But I want to go as long as my health allows. There was no such parade to mark the peace after the anti-fascist war in the past."

And he is looking forward to seeing the display of China's modern military might as part of the parade. "Back in the war we used very backward weapons and I will be glad to see the advanced equipment used by today's soldiers," he said.

Brave Chan Yung, chairman of the New Territories Association of Societies, estimates there are tens of surviving veterans of the Hong Kong guerilla force in the city. As a deputy to the National People's Congress, he and his colleague, Peter Wong Man-kong, wrote to the NPC Standing Committee in March, urging the central government to recognise the contributions of old soldiers "regardless of whether they fought under Kuomintang or Communist troops".

Wong said his contacts later told him the ministry had extended invitations to all surviving KMT second world war veterans living in Hong Kong, and some had signed up.

But groups linked to veterans of the nationalist army - many of whom sought shelter in what was then a British colony after defeat by the communists in the civil war - tell a different story.

The Whampoa Military Academy Alumni Association, a KMT veterans' group in the city, and two pro-KMT groups - the Hong Kong and Kowloon Trades Union Council and the Hong Kong Chung Shan Research Institute - had not heard of any old KMT soldiers getting an invite.

Instead the groups, who say a dozen or more KMT veterans survive in the city, will organise their own commemorations locally.

Su Wen-si, 88, a KMT veteran who fought in Myanmar and India and has lived in Hong Kong since 1981, said he had not been invited to Beijing - not that he would have accepted.

"I wouldn't want to go ... The Communist Party was very cruel to KMT soldiers. After the civil war, many were shot to death or sent to labour camps," he said.

Lee Kwok-keung, the union group's chairman and son of a soldier, said attending might be seen as "recognising the mainland's narrative of war history".

Peter Choi, 93, who fought in the battle of Hong Kong under the British army and is now president of the World War II Veterans Association, said he and his fellow former British-Chinese soldiers had not received an invitation. "I am too old to travel and I'm already the healthiest among us. Most of the others are living in homes for the elderly or are in wheelchairs."

Twelve British-Chinese second world war veterans still live in the city, according to the association's records.