In Farewell to Manzanar, how did Japanese Americans improve their living situations in Manzanar?

In Farewell to Manzanar, Jeanne Wakatsuki recounts her experience being sent to an internment camp with other Japanese Americans during world war two. The first part of the memoir recounts the feelings of anxiety that sprang from the evacuation and relocation of her family and neighbors. Once in the internment camp, the people there find their living conditions barely passable—the walls let in dust, and the camp is not finished.
One of the first things the Japenese people do is accept the problems they face. In chapter four of the memoir, the phrase shikata ga nai appears as a constant refrain. The phrase means “this cannot be helped,” and the Japanese people use it as a means of coping with the issues they are facing in the camp. Anytime something happens that is undesirable but ultimately out of their hands, they allow themselves to let it go by using the phrase. For example, mama dislikes using public restrooms, but she stomachs it because she must, and she uses the phrase to overcome the struggle:

Like so many of the women there, Mama never did get used to the latrines. It was a humiliation she just learned to endure: shikata ga nai, this cannot be helped. (Chapter 4)

Along with simply accepting conditions they cannot change, the Japanese Americans move to fix things they can change. One way some of the Japanese Americans tried to improve their living conditions was by demonstrating, protesting, and eventually rioting. The riots had a mixed effect, and some Japanese rioters were killed, but conditions did improve afterward. The story tells us,

In the months before the riot the bells rang often at our mess halls, sending out the calls for public meetings. They rang for higher wages, they rang for better food, they rang for open revolt, for patriotism, for common sense, and for a wholesale return to Japan. (Chapter 9)

The bells ringing were a sign of community cooperation for action. The entire community came together to bring change for themselves. It was a spectacular vision of the unity towards their demands, and eventually, some change began to happen in the way the government treated them.
They also changed their lives by tending to the land and the existence they were forced to live. The tended the land by planting gardens, trees, and other foliage that allowed them fresh food and something to do during the day. They also created social programs like music, art, dance, religious classes, and cultural ceremony lessons - these allowed the Japanese Americans to master things that would enable them to escape the camp through the art, but also helped them see themselves as American—something they were denied by American society beyond the camp.