The Sora (Porzana carolina) is the most common and widely distributed member of the rail family in North America. It breeds as far north as Alaska and Canada’s Northwest Territories and winters as far south as Guyana and central Peru (AOU 1998, Melvin and Gibbs 1996). Long-distance vagrancy and dispersal to remote lands is widespread in rails (Taylor 1998). This paper reports the first Sora confirmed in the Hawaiian Islands and briefly reviews other records of rails in the islands. While the occurrence of Porzana rails in Hawaii could be expected, on the basis of the fossil record, surprisingly, this report is the first documentation of a vagrant of this genus in the Hawaiian chain.