Thanks Old-Biscuit! Confirmed yesterday the HW heater has check valve on hot side. This wasn't explained to me when we took delivery, previous camper had 2 shut offs and I wasn't thinking about this as an option at all. So to confirm I put the valve (in photo above) in bypass, pulled the HW heater plug (on outside of camper) and pressurized the system and no water came out the plug hole.
I also need to add, for anyone reading this in the future, a correction to my opening post, the HW tank was not backfilling through the hot side as I incorrectly thought. I was operating the valve incorrectly. As others have enlightend me, the valve position as shown will fill the HW tank.